What Matters: Internet essays curated by McKinsey & Company

Writer and novelist Mark Helprin drew the ire of hundreds of thousands of readers when he argued for the extension of copyright laws in a New York Times op-ed article two years ago. His recent book, Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto, fleshes out his key arguments in defense of authors’ rights.

Creative Commons: Enabling the next level of innovation

By Joi Ito

30 October 2009

Here’s a thought experiment: try to imagine what it would have been like to create Google before the era of the Internet and open standards. You would probably have had to pay millions of dollars to create the necessary software on a proprietary operating system.

Zipcar: selling cars, one ride at a time

By Scott Griffith

27 October 2009

Technologies such as high-speed Internet, mobile broadband and GPS are enabling new ways of providing value to customers. In this article, Scott Griffith, CEO of Zipcar, describes the relationship between technology and his company’s innovative business model.

Using technology to improve workforce collaboration

By James Manyika, Kara Sprague and Lareina Yee

27 October 2009

Knowledge workers fuel innovation and growth, yet the nature of knowledge work remains poorly understood—as do the ways to improve its effectiveness. The heart of what knowledge workers do on the job is collaborate, which in the broadest terms means they interact to solve problems, serve customers, engage with partners, and nurture new ideas.

Investigative reporting in the Web era

By Paul Steiger

14 October 2009

On Sunday, July 12, 2009, the Los Angeles Times published on its front page and on four full inside pages an article headed, “Problem nurses stay on job as patients suffer”. Of the many extraordinary things about this story, one stands out: it was written and principally reported by two reporters, Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, who do not work for the Times. They work at ProPublica, a New York–based nonprofit and nonpartisan team of investigative journalists founded in 2008 and funded by philanthropy, including major support from the Sandler Foundation.

Crossing the burning bridge

By Tom Curley

14 October 2009

The marketplace for news content is growing. More people in more places seek out news more often than ever. Yet we, the creators of that content, don’t get paid appropriately for our hard work and the risks we take.

Transparency is the new marketing

By Clay Shirky

26 February 2009

When organizations think about strategy, it’s often in the context of their own objectives. But when the surrounding reality changes—as it is doing in the media landscape—both strategy and goals need to adjust.

Citizen journalists: Online Paul Reveres

By Arianna Huffington

26 February 2009

At the moment, all the talk in media circles is about the death of newspapers. These obituaries strike me as extremely premature.

Participatory technocracy

By Craig Newmark

26 February 2009

Americans are increasingly using the Internet to participate directly in democracy. And over the next 20 years, our governance will include forms of direct democracy that have never before been possible.

The collaborative company

By Yochai Benkler

26 February 2009

“Peer production”—large-scale distributed action by many individuals—is transitioning from a curiosity to a general phenomenon.

Beyond the Sloan Age

By Jacques Bughin, James Manyika, and Roger Roberts

26 February 2009

Until recently, the core principles of management had hardly changed since the innovations conceived by former General Motors chairman Alfred Sloan. Over the last decade, however, the stable environment in which companies have flourished has been changed by technological innovations, globalization, and continued specialization.

And now from our readers

By Thomas L. Doorley, III

26 February 2009

As the global economic slowdown hits government revenues hard, the natural tendency will be to seek fresh sources of revenue such as higher sales taxes. Look out, Internet!

Get ready for a new economic era

By Paul Saffo

26 February 2009

The consumer economy that was born in the 1950s is lurching to an end, and a new “creator economy” is emerging. This shift represents the third economic turning in just over a century. A look back at its antecedents reveals much about what to expect.