Traditional marketing and PR still apply in principle, but the medium has changed drastically. A friend appropriately pointed out to me the other day that these days PR stands for page rank – indicating the importance of being seen on the web.

Being seen on the web is not enough. It’s true that Google has become a new frontier for marketing but if you think about it, Google is just a medium. Influencing the web or/and influencing mainstream media via web is whole another story. Content is still king and with the availability of the medium like web, influencers other than yourself shall play a bigger role in disseminating the content for you. In other words, quality of content is still very much crucial but more important is going after the groups of people and parties who will spread the news for you. People often turn to their friends or other people whom they trust. In conceptual age, individual influencers can all of a sudden find a medium of their choosing within the web to spread the things they like or/and dislike. As an entrepreneur, it is extremely important to create this effective network of influencers.

In conceptual age, with lower barrier to entry, influencers have tools like blogs, forums, web chat, podcast, video chat to spread your message instantaneously. At any given time, there are over 8 million users talking on Skype, millions more expressing their views on various free blogs offered by companies like WordPress, and on social media outlets like Facebook and MySpace.

Majority of members on the places that I have just mentioned are using these platforms to promote personal views for personal uses only. As the backers of these sites, Microsoft, MediaCorp and Google among many more are trying to turn casual users to money making influencers, this is a perfect time for innovative entrepreneurs to exploit these opportunities. Before long, many free features will soon start costing you – sooner if the major backers have it their way.

So, I strongly urge entrepreneurs to tap into your group of influencers and give them incentive and the right value to help you spread your cause.

Jay Maharjan 

Conceptual age is going to be different. As I write regularly on this topic, the government needs to enhance measures to foster entrepreneurship, this time around focusing on encouraging traditional knowledge workers to get into conceptual entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurially driven knowledge workers have traditionally raked in better rewards than their fellow counterparts who work for larger organizations. This group of knowledge entrepreneurs has contributed in innovating, producing and offering better services and products – and in a bigger picture has helped American economy stay competitive.

A new generation of political leaders needs to keep this in mind and maintain policies that will offer sustainable competitive advantage by introducing balanced legistlations that will leave special provisions for mom and pop version of conceptual entrepreneurs.

This is a time that the country demand that the people running for higher offices to have not only legistlative experience but also to possess executive as well as creative, right brain skillsets. The task has grown to a historic proportion for politicians to not only maintain the status quo, but also to introduce bold moves to bring new ways of thinking. I strongly believe politicians of this century should be required to understand and recognize fully the arrival of conceptual age.

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch -and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss
Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it

No college degree or past accomplishment prepares you for the challenges that you will face for your next venture. Odds are obviously better if you have gone through a good business school and have some past entrepreneurial experience. Good entrepreneurs play smart and know when to quit and start all over again without hesitation..

In conceptual generation, entrepreneurs have endless opportunities. Smart entrepreneurs will try different options and leverage on emerging tools and move on quickly to the venture that yields the best results in a shortest turn around time. With the availability of custom software at your disposal (without having to learn a single line of codes) to the creative resources that you can acquire at $10 -$15 per hour through websites like elance.com, creating a workable prototype will be easier. Now, on your first presentation to a venture capitalist, you can actually take a working demo instead of a boring power point presentation that virtually everybody else uses.

The breakthroughs are not only in the areas of software, but also in other areas such as entertainment, sports, bio technology, green technology and nano technology. Nano technology is the future of science that will revolutionize the way materials will be produced and manufactured. As the foundation of the technology is based on molecular level production, one can only imagine how it will impact the processes, design and the overall economy. Less production costs will result in lower operation costs, and that will translate into lower costs for manufacturing – which will ultimately contribute conceptual entrepreneurs with lower barriers to entry in terms of start-up costs. I have summarized all these new revolutionizing technologies in my upcoming book.

Entertainment is another big arena that will benefit heavily from the innovation that will take place in the conceptual age. With the advent of high resolution digital cameras and inexpensive film editing software, a High school student can now do endless tricks with Final Cut Pro on his iMac, something that would have taken a team of experts in a larger production house 20 years ago.

Case in point, 4entrepreneur.net is producing an original television series for entrepreneurs. The shows are currently being aired on several Los Angeles stations. The shows are being taped in 3 high tech studios in Los Angeles, but majority of the team that is helping me put together is a group of film school students – the true conceptual entrepreneurs. I was skeptical in the beginning, but after successfully wraping up 20 shows and counting, I wouldn’t trade them for anybody. They are the future of movie making – indie filmmakers of tomorrow!

In a larger scale, as digital security increases and the measures to tighten piracy matures, digital distribution of video content is going to improve drastically in coming days.

Green technology is not just another buzz word. The United States is in the dire straits to come up with a solution to move away from energy dependence on foreign oil. There is no time to wait and test different means. It is critical to implement one and all measures ranging from wind, solar, geothermal to drilling aggressively. All of these measures will create opportunities for conceptual entrepreneurs.

Regardless of abundance in various opportunities, the challenges are not going to be menial. It is important for conceptual entrepreneurs not to fall in the clichéd mindset that new opportunities will bring easy money. A different set of opportunities will emerge but the principle of entrepreneurship will remain the same.

Entrepreneurship in the conceptual age – endless creative entrepreneurial opportunities

Never before in the history that entrepreneurs had so much flexibility and tools at their disposal like they have now. With the technology advancement and globalization of high speed internet, entrepreneurs have power to do amazing things. This is welcoming news for knowledge entrepreneurs. Knowledge workers often had to rely on their parent organization or company to make significant impact – making it very hard to make it on their own. These days, with the availability of modern tools, even college students can compete with large multi-nationals. If you look at the recent history of innovation, numerous multi-national companies were results of college experiments – google, facebook, myspace.. just to name a few. This is just the beginning. The types of success eBay and Google experienced were very few and far in between. The frequency of entrepreneurial success of this type will exponentially grow in the future. Technologies are maturing, costs of technology are going down drastically due to healthy competition. Barrier to entry is going down. What dot com boom promised prematurely – it is becoming a reality right now. Virtual communities, portals and social networking sites are already offering previews of what can be expected on the horizon.

Sky is the limit for virtual entrepreneurs in conceptual economy. Entrepreneurs never liked to follow rules anyway. This time around, they will truly get to lead the way in coming up with unique, unthinkable yet surprisingly simple online business models. The model that works in one geographic location may not work in another. But, the beauty is that conceptual entrepreneurs will adopt – and they will adopt quick. Case in point – the way book publishing is taking place around the world is changing. A teenager in Japan wrote a whole novel using text messaging to her blog – and her fans downloaded portions at a time. The concept became so popular that when the hard copy of her novel came out, it was an instant best seller and she made over eight million dollars. Today, believe it or not – half of the top ten books sold in Japan are the results of mobile phone authors. Japan is usually one of the first countries to adopt to new mobile concepts.

Usually, some concepts translates to other cultures and the others do not. Well, we may not see a cell phone novel on the New York Times list anytime soon.. but who knows..some variation of the concept may catch on in the US and Europe in the next decade. These are the changing times. Time magazine appropriately named you as the person of the year last year. You have tremendous amount of power to change the way you sustain as an entrepreneur or a consumer.

I consider Youtube generation as the first group to represent conceptual generation. Youtube generation is changing the way news is distributed. High traffic sites like TMZ.com and CNN’s iReport already rely heavily on end-user generated content. Highly sophisticated cell phones have enabled regular people to capture live media footage and distribute to the world instantaneously. As conceptual economy matures, technology will also mature and truly open a platform for creativity and virtual entrepreneurship to flourish.

Beyond the more obvious virtual entrepreneurship opportunities, entrepreneurs will have tremendous capabilities to collaborate with resources from around the globe. Entrepreneurs will be leveraging on each other beyond outsourcing menial tasks but in a scale and scope unheard of ever before in the history.

One another concept that is catching on is the concept of replicating ideas that work in one country and taking it to other less developed markets. eBay became very popular early on in the US. Similar auction ideas mushroomed across the globe. Initially, local entrepreneurs started the wave and once the concept became successful locally – they got acquired by eBay for hefty sums. Indian version of eBay- Bazee.com was acquired in 2004 for whopping $ 50 million dollars. Similarly, eBay acquired iBazar, a French auction site and Tradera, Sweden’s leading online auction style marketplace.

In conceptual generation, we will see this trend growing in an exponential way. There are enough entrepreneurial ideas and concepts floating around the world that smart entrepreneurs can and will easily tap into and convert to viable ventures.

In factual note, America’s Gross National Product has grown over the years, but the actual, physical weight of the GNP has declined. Go figure. This clearly supports the emergence of the new economic model.

Survival Guide for entrepreneurs in the Conceptual economy

I have been writing posts on the conceptual economy, especially on how it will impact you – whether you are an entrepreneur, a start-up company, a thriving business, or an employee of a Multi national corporation. It is critical to understand where you stand, so that you can prepare yourself accordingly. As the legendary Management guru Peter Drucker often said, you can not manage change – you can only stay ahead of it.

I divide my approach and understanding into 8 segments – hopefully I will be able to pave a path and offer a simple guide for you to navigate and thrive in this innovative, resourceful, and conceptual generation.

• New role of entrepreneurship in conceptual economy
• Political Implication
• Web 2.0 – Changing the face of Internet as you know it
• Outsourcing – End of knowledge economy as we know it
• Role of management and executives in the conceptual economy
• Role of right brain thinkers                 
• Maintaining the sustainable competitive advantage: saving the US economy
• Technology is your friend: the pivotal role of technology in conceptual economy