BretWagner.com

What­ever busi­ness you are in, think about this scary sta­tis­tic: 75% of all busi­nesses in the US depend 100% on the US con­sumer.  Amer­ica is a consumer-driven econ­omy, which is why things get rough when con­sumers keep their cash safely tucked away rather than spend it.

We should cel­e­brate the other 25% that have fig­ured out what it is that the rest of the world wants and are sell­ing it to them. Emerg­ing mar­kets are a sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­nity in the Amer­i­can econ­omy, one that should be pur­sued in the efforts of tran­si­tion­ing this 75% econ­omy with a more global one.

Found this great info­graphic over at ChangeThis.  Thanks to the folks at Inter­na­tional Net­works Archive.

Online video is doing for the arts what the Guten­berg press did for the writ­ten word — super­charged it.

Check out this video from TED.  Chris Ander­son high­lights a num­ber of exam­ples where some­one doing some­thing extra­or­di­nary, takes their show to the web and all of a sud­den it goes viral.  Stadiums-worth of view­ers watch­ing a break­dancer per­form some extra­or­di­nary moves, pushes the enve­lope of dance and all of a sud­den, you have legions of dancers per­form­ing new moves never before seen.  

All it took was a per­former and their video camera.  

I’ would go so far as to say that this kind of online force will push the enve­lope of all areas in per­form­ing arts — dance, music, spo­ken word, singing — and ratchet it up to a level where each per­former tries to out­per­form the next.  This cre­ates a snow­ball effect that can­not be stopped.  Per­form­ers show off a new skill, view­ers watch this per­for­mance and demand more, other per­form­ers watch and decide to take it a level fur­ther, and again the audi­ence in increases its expec­ta­tions of what art looks like.