Just had a quick meeting with Xavier Comtesse. It was basically about his next book about what he calls the "Direct Economy" What he means by that is the new ecosystem we have with minipreneurs, consumactors/consommacteurs, crowdsourcing and so forth. Xavier also described it in a short article (in french though) here. As Laurent summarizes on the Ballpark blog:
our transition to a “direct economy”. He makes a strong case that our system is being transformed by four factors: • consumers are now part of the value chain • useless intermediaries are disappearing • new business models threaten secured incomes • prices are more and more functioning as auctionsHe summarized the situation in one brilliant quote
We are leaving an economy based on the knowledge of producers for one based on the knowledge of consumers”