Big sombrero economy

The phrase "the Big Sombrero" was first popularized as a term referring to an economic model by John Blossom in the book "Content Nation: Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Changes Our Work, Our Lives and Our Future," published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in January 2009 (ISBN 0-4703-7921-9).
The Big Sombrero model theorizes that goods and services created and exchanged outside of the economy for mass-produced goods and services generates a sustainable economic value equal to or greater than that of the economic value of mass-produced goods, creating a three-dimensional economic model that resembles the shape of a large sombrero hat. The Big Sombrero model's vertical axis represents the economic value of goods and services, the horizontal axis represents the number of items creating economic value and the third ("Z") axis represents how the value of markets for goods and services change over time. The area under the tall center of the sombrero, also known as a crown, represents the typical growth and decline of the value of goods and services over time in a mass market, while the area under the broad rim of the sombrero represents the value of goods and services generated by people outside of markets for mass-produced goods and services. The area under upturned edge of the sombrero may appear to be very small compared to the area under the sombrero's crown in a two-dimensional model, but when considered over a period of time through a three-dimensional model the area under the rim remains relatively constant and accumulates through time into a volume comparable to the area under the crown.
In "Content Nation" Blossom uses the Big Sombrero model to explain the impact of social media publishing on economic activity. Blossom theorizes that mass-marketed goods and services create great economic activity over a relatively short period of time powered in large part by the ability of traditional mass media outlets to stimulate awareness of them and demand for them. The high risk of launching a new mass-market product or service tends to stimulate large expenditures for mass media communications at the time of their introduction and fewer expenditures as the demand for these goods and services declines and is replaced by demand for new goods and services. By contrast, while media expenditures for products and services generated in very small markets may be small in comparison to mass-marketed goods and services, the demand for them is relatively constant and will respond more efficiently to the person-to-person marketing enabled via social media publishing technologies. Blossom views this enabling of small markets by social media as a key indicator that social media is helping to fuel a fundamental shift in global economic markets, enabling small producers of goods and services to compete far more effectively with mass-produced goods and services, over time creating economies that operate more efficiently on a global scale with less centralized management of capital and resources. Blossom sees mass markets continuing to be sustainable in the midst of the Big Sombrero model, fed oftentimes by rapidly growing niche products and services emerging from the rim of the Big Sombrero economy, but believes that their overall contribution to the global economy will begin to diminish as social media communications enable the increasing efficiency of niche producers.
The Big Sombrero model versus The Long Tail model
The Big Sombrero economic model builds on some of the concepts developed by Chris Anderson as The Long Tail economic model, but with key distinctions. The core of The Long Tail economic model is the study of markets for mass-produced goods and services for which much economic value is created by a handful of highly popular goods and services over a very short period of time. While publishing technologies such as search engines may expose less popular mass-produced goods and services to niche markets to increase their value over time, these goods and services are engineered for mass markets by their fundamental nature. The Long Tail model does not challenge the nature and the ultimate value of those goods and services fundamentally; it is in essence a "trickle down" model for maximizing the value of mass-produced goods and services.
By contrast, the Big Sombrero economic model assumes that mass-produced goods and services are a relatively recent and potentially transitory invention of human civilization - the rapidly rising and falling crown of the sombrero - and that the fundamental state of economics is to create value from niche markets - the relatively constant rise of the rim of the sombrero. Instead of mass-manufactured economic "hits" being the focus of economic activity, the Big Sombrero model focuses on niche goods and services that may, on occasion, rise to enormous popularity, but which can be economically sustainable with our without mass markets from their very inception. The qualities of these goods and services for niche markets are not designed oftentimes for mass appeal, but may be able to gain mass appeal through the highly scalable influence afforded through social media publishing technologies. Thus the Big Sombrero economic model is in essence a "push up" model for maximizing the value of niche market goods and services with or without their conversion into mass-marketed items.
Implications of the Big Sombrero Model
TBD

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