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Boy, that last post on B2B Media sure was gloomy! How about some root canal for light relief? Seriously, lets look forward to the bright future. In this post we will look at 12 firms that are doing very well as intermediaries between buyers and sellers in a B2B market. We call these the "12 straws in the wind of change." From these successes we will draw 10 general lessons about the future of B2B Media. We call these the "10 themes songs from the future."

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For our next look at the inspirations for semantic web innovation, we spoke with Michael Osofsky, co-founder and chief innovation officer of NetBase. (See the first in the series here.) As we reported here, NetBase is the creator of the semantic search technology that powers tools including ScienceBase, HealthBase and most recently ConsumerBase, to help researchers in the scientific, medical, and CPG spaces, respectively, harness the wealth of content and social media commentary on the web for insights. Earlier this month it announced that it has raised $9 million in venture capital funding, completing its Series C round with Altos Ventures and Thomvest Ventures Inc.

You might say NetBase was inspired by a young engineer’s disappointment: Some time ago, Osofsky was a passionate employee of Ariba in its earlier days as a B-to-B marketplace, and saw a project he’d worked on for a year get the axe. Looking back, he understands that that kind of thing happens all the time in the business world, but at the time it fueled his determination “to not see that happen to any work I did or any other engineer did.” So he headed for MIT’s Sloan School of Management to learn how to do innovation the right way. There he learned that innovation is a successful combination of understanding the needs of consumers and customers, and understanding what new technologies and inventions are available that might be applied in interesting ways to address those needs.

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B2B Media is the unglamorous sibling in the media family.

Historically what we used to call trade publishing was as unexciting as the actuarial business; and equally profitable, consistently profitable, consistently for decades. The kind of rock solid cash flow that you could take to the bank. Which is precisely what a lot of folks did during the Great Leverage. These old trade-publishing businesses were bought and sold like pork bellies. Just when the Internet was kicking into it's next cycle, just before the smelly leverage stuff hit the fan and precipitated the Great Recession and about the time when a generation was coming into the workforce saying "what is a print magazine Daddy?" So, B2B Media is right now in the really scary Act 4 of The Creative Destruction 7 Act Play.

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The semantic web is an innovation upon an innovation. As this blog regularly covers, innovations are being built upon its broad shoulders all the time. But what is the inspiration for the innovators who see the potential in using semantic technologies in new and creative ways? And how do they continue to drive that innovation as their services gain traction and their start-ups begin growing?

The SemanticWeb Blog thought this was a topic worth exploring. So this week, we are, having raised the question with a few minds behind some recent semantic web start-ups, and we hope to continue bringing such perspectives as part of our regular coverage going forward.

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In this science fiction exercise I make some assumptions of what technologies will become mainstream in the medium term and what this will do to the current financial services landscape.

I am being deliberately vague on time lines as it is impossible to predict when change will happen. By "medium term" I am thinking in the 3 to 10 year time horizon that venture capitalists and start-up entrepreneurs need to build substantial value. This is the start-up timing horizon.

We use the start-up timing horizon, as this is not just science fiction fun, this enables scenario planning. Or, to put it in more popular terms, this enables you to "skate to where the puck is going."

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In the last post we looked at the 3 main sources of cash flow in the financial services industry:

1. Fees for loaning money to consumers & small biz

2. Fees for connecting providers and consumers of capital for large companies.

3. Fees for managing individual's (aka "consumer's") money.

In this post we will look at some of the modes and ventures that are attacking these markets.

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During September and October 2008, the financial markets had their meltdown moment. It was scary as hell for anybody who was even remotely close to the action. As a precipitator of the Great Recession, it has impacted us all. But that is all history, right? The stock market is up and everything is back to normal? Wrong. Politicians will regulate the markets so we can get back to normal? Wrong. What is happening under the surface is a much bigger wave, driven by the Internet that is fundamentally shifting the economics and power structures of the financial services business.

This is the first of ten markets in our Semantic Wave series (click here for the introductory posts that set the scene).

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If you are in a market that is going through wild, disruptive change where nobody knows how it will play out, you might be thinking:

"We have seen this movie before."

You have.

Markets go through fundamental disruptive change in fairly predictable phases, albeit with subtle variations that make it interesting. Understanding what act your industry is currently in will help you figure out your own role, whether as employee, entrepreneur or investor.

Here are the 7 acts in the Creative Destruction play:

Act 1. The Old Guard Dominate

This is when a few big companies dominate a market that has not fundamentally changed for decades. Mergers, debt leveraged acquisitions and "roll-ups" have locked the old guard into behemoth structures. No entrepreneur would think of competing against these companies and, if they did, no investor would back them.

Act 2. Straws In The Wind

This is when a few visionary/crazy entrepreneurs see opportunity. Occasionally VCs get active at this stage, but all too often VCs are part of the established order and do not see enough reason to believe that the times are changing. It takes guts to see a few straws blowing about and theorize that this is caused by an invisible wind. The signs of change are far from obvious but "the answer my friend is blowing in the wind".

Act 3. Denial

The changes are now real and the old guard management can see it. But they don't know how to react, so they reach for creative accounting tricks to smooth out earnings and make it look as if nothing has changed. So, when the new numbers do finally appear, it emerges as a crisis, often with a restatement of earnings and a change of CEO. Short-heavy hedge funds do well here.

Act 4. Wild creativity

The crazy entrepreneurs who started at Act 2 are now gaining real traction and major amounts of capital. They are experimenting frenetically to find what is really sustainable/scalable. There are lots of stories in the media about them but, as the old guard numbers still appear to be OK, the accepted wisdom is still that nothing will fundamentally change.

Act 5. Blow up

At this stage the reality can no longer be denied and we see bankruptcies, Chapter 11 restructuring and fire sales.

Act 6. Reconstruction

This is when a new power structure emerges clearly. This is when we see IPOs from the visionary entrepreneurs who started in Act 2.

Act 7.The new old guard dominates

Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of seeing how quickly the new guard arose and think that they can also be deposed quickly. The entrepreneurs who made to this stage will be tenacious, paranoid and really hard to beat - until the next wave comes along.

Which Act Is Your Industry In?

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We will be describing truly disruptive change hitting these markets. Some might question what is really different? Change is a constant. We have all lived with that mantra for a while. We have seen industries such as technology go through fundamental change many times. Financial services have been reinvented many times.

However something is fundamentally different this time around.

We have been used to linear change, when one factor changes. For example, Moore's Law has roiled through the technology markets for decades creating the waves of change from mainframe to mini to PC to Internet, each with its own dominant players. But the arc of change was relatively predictable. IBM saw the mini and PC waves coming and Bill Gates saw the Internet wave coming. They might have had trouble adapting, but the direction and even speed of change were relatively predictable.

In some cases we see really wrenching change when two factors combine. For example, when regulatory change collides with new technology, the result is very hard to predict.

What is happening today is perfect storm, where all the components are in flux, where nothing is certain. In times of of non-linear change, markets go into a chaotic state for a while. Order does eventually emerge, but it takes time, the shape of that new order is hard to predict and the eventual winners won’t look anything like the current incumbents. Seeking safety by grasping at the old verities is like grasping at a straw. It won’t help. It is a straw being blown about by the same storm, not a lifeboat on a calm sea that can rescue the big ship that just hit an iceberg.

Here are the 7 winds in this perfect storm:

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"The Semantic Web" is often viewed as a tad academic, the sort of thing that geeks, librarians and scientists get excited about. It is not sexy like social media. Well you sexy social media hipsters, just remember the new golden rule - "the geek shall inherit the earth."

There is a reason you need to think about this semantic stuff. In short, it is the key to the "web's golden triangle." This is the term coined by Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. As he puts it:

"The three current big megatrends in the web/tech sector are mobile, social and real time." This post looks at how the Semantic Web is the key to this golden triangle.

Here is the picture with Semantic Web as the core:

This is how they inter-relate:

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