This collaborative approach gave rise to the fast-growing Linux operating system, and it is quickly becoming an organizational model for other information industries, including biotech. The human genome project, for example, has been largely a collaborative process, with researchers publishing their results on the Internet for others to build on. This approach will be necessary to tackle other complex biology problems that make gene mapping look like child's play. When the heralded age of broadband networks finally arrives, collaboration could trigger further exotic mutations in industrial structure. Partha Ghosh, global practice leader of information-industrials at consulting firm Adventis, envisions Information Age assembly lines of bits and bytes that leverage worker brainpower, rather than brawn.
Companies already collaborate over networks with their customers and partners.
Broadband could carry it to a new level. Instead of selling tablets, the pharmaceutical company would offer a service, much like GE's engine contracts, employing pricing mechanisms that don't even exist today. As if things weren't already tumultuous, technological advances that are now crystal clear in the laboratory promise to wreak havoc with some of today's basic business premises. The planet may be blanketed in a new species of chameleon semiconductor chips that can adapt themselves on the fly for different kinds of computing tasks. Virtually everything will have embedded intelligence.