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ABC Radio National: Discussion on the future of influence

Ross Dawson, September 16, 2009 5:27 PM US PT

ABC Radio National Future Tense this morning featured a discussion on the future of influence (click here for the podcast of both the radio program, and the unabridged discussion between Duncan Riley and myself). It kicks off with a quote from Chris Saad saying that influence and reputation are the currencies of the day, even more than attention.

When asked why we rebadged Future of Media Summit as Future of Influence Summit this year, I explained why “influence is the future of media”, and the five key trends in how influence is transforming society.

Duncan pointed to how the rise of Internet and social media means that influence can now be global. He also raised the issue of trust agents, and what it takes to be trusted as a publisher. We have more choice in what we look for, and so we need markers of credibility.

On the topic of business models for influence, I talked about two key ideas. The first is whether and how individuals can profit from their influence, and how that will develop. The second is the emergence of influence as a currency, and the companies that profiting from making influence explicit for companies.

Listen to the long version of the interview for more details.

2 Comments

Wojtek Materka said:

You posed a very valid question about "trading" influence. True influence, by definition, is actually not a currency, and it cannot be traded indefinitely. It can be used in negotiation, but mostly as a leverage. And only as your negotiating partner doesn't own the actual source of your influence/power. So this leads me to the next paragraph:

I see the point of preferential treatment of "influential" customers by companies. But who is really influential here - maybe the ones who design the metrics really? In another words: aren't you going to change your behavior if you knew what would land you with higher score from those metrics? So we are not talking about "influence" in a general term, but in a more specific, consumerist aspect and some sort of idea of co-advertising. As anything becomes transparent, so do these measurements :)

Anyway, this is definitely an interesting and important topic.

September 17, 2009 6:00 PM

Ross Dawson said:

Very interesting issues you raise Wojtek.

One of the key aspects of measuring influence or reputation is indeed that any system that is used (because it is useful, as influence measures are) is going to be gamed. However it is possible to build systems that are harder to be gamed. This has a long way to play out.

September 17, 2009 6:38 PM

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.