Essential piece by Ben Thompson about how technology is changing brands and branding. He touches on the implications of lower barriers to entry:
it is significantly easier today to get a startup off the ground; however, that actually means startups need more venture capital, not less, because the real challenge is marketing and/or sales (and thus, by extension, venture capital is bifurcating between very large and very small)
and e-commerce:
dominating shelf space was a core part of their strategy, and while I’m no mathematician, I’m pretty sure dominating an infinite resource is a losing proposition. What matters now is dominating search.
Great thinking and writing (as, by the way, are his very reasonably priced daily updates).