Tim Bursch

In many cases, I don't want to be involved in a village. I want to buy commodity products where I could care less about the story of who made them and where. The transactional cost in time is too high for the village model on most types of purchases.

Ed,
Thanks for your input. I agree on most commodity products. I'm not proposing that we do all business like a village. I see possible benefits for knowledge workers, digital craftsmen and women, and service based businesses. I do think we will see more local food (www.slowmoneyalliance.org), co-op business, and micro-manufacturing with continued energy costs.

Tim, my guess is that we'll see more polarization. People will care less about most things, but more deeply about the things that matter to them most. Businesses will do well if they can figure out which type of personalities they serve.

I defiantly want to be involved in a village type scenario, and am doing my bit to get one happening in my local area as well we being involved in online villages.

Bricks and mortar business in particular need to start operating a lot smarter or face the very real proposition of perishing.
They need to learn to look for opportunities to complement and work together (collaboration) with other relevant business owners instead of focusing on trying to out smart their opposition.

If they changed their thinking to who could we work with so that we add greater value for our customer, by offering better services (Eg a real estate agent and a removal company working together to offer a package deal to sell your house and move you to the next house) they could potentially reduce their advertising costs and increase their profits and in the process offer a service that will provide far greater value to their customers.

Thanks for stopping by. I think you are onto something with co-marketing. Why don't more small businesses help each other with the same customer base.

Also, on the local front, check out a friends company for making the online village more connected: http://localtweeps.com/

Great way of looking at this Tim. The more time I spend online, the more and more I realize that things run and operate within a series of small tight knit communities (villages). When I think about this metaphor I can't help but think that sites like twitter, FB, digg are the cities, so to speak.

IRL, people gravitate towards cities because of the resources available. You would arguably have a wider variety and higher quantity of resources if you reside in an area with more people.

The difference, of course, is that online we can reside in many places at once and are not limited to physical space. The implications of this are that we have the ability to communicate on a village scale while harnessing the resources of the city scale.

Great post, and I must admit I am happy to be a part of this "village".

Jason,
In these new villages, I think we will see more bartering and collaboration. Already happening. We will have a wider community of friends and people that have our back. Business will continue to be more horizontal and I hope inclusive. Nice shop you are setting up BTW : )
Cheers!