Article: The end of an era: we are perfectly positioned--with one foot in the past and the other in the present--to do nothing but watch other industries define our future for us. (Fast Forward).

We are in the middle of a transition between two distinct periods of industry history, which we'll label (for lack of better terms) the Era of Who You Know and the Era of What You Know.

Entrepreneurs and dealmakers dominated the Era of Who You Know. People got things done by force of will, connections and networking. Fortunes were built or traded on a combination of gut instinct and past experience. The industry was a small universe in which everyone seemed to know every person they needed to know. As late as the 1970s, trade shows were as much a gathering of the far-flung tribe as a showcase for new goods, services and technologies. They were social galas that ...

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