Does the internet spell doom for the expert?

From time immemorial the world of trade has been fueled by a phenomena which the economists refer to as information asymmetry. Information asymmetry happens when information or data is scattered and not easily accessible to the common man . Hence the individual who has access to a large pool of information (we shall call him an expert) is at an advantage vis-à-vis the common man (buyer). For age’s information asymmetry and the ability of some individuals to hoard information has created opportunities for experts to make money. Consider this for an example; my young friend takes up a job in Mumbai , after accepting the offer , the next problem is that of housing. She has no clue of what an apartment would cost her and based on advise from friends and colleagues, she approaches a real estate agent. The agent shows her a few apartments near to her workplace and after a few rounds she settles for one. After a few months of moving into the apartment she discovers that she is overpaying her landlord. Why did this happen to her , the answers are blatantly obvious

a) She was forced to rely on the so-called expert –real estate broker to get the only available data on the rentals market

b) There was no published information about rentals, which she could access and therefore challenge the expert

The expert relied on information asymmetry to make a neat commission on the inflated rentals .As you would all agree that this is a very common example (duped by the broker…) , while this is a very small but potent example of information asymmetry , if you look around your lives you will find many more , remember the used car dealer from whom you bought your first car ?…the examples are countless .

However the Internet and the zillions of pages of content is gravely wounding information asymmetries of all kinds. As a medium the Internet is brilliant in shifting information from the hands of those who have it, into the hands of those who don’t and therefore bringing much more equality in the expert and buyer relationship.

Consider the following websites :

http://www.indiacar.com/buyused.asp

http://www.apnaloan.com/india-loans.shtml

http://www.quotesmith.com/

All these website are examples of how Internet makes the role of the expert redundant. In the first case you know the price of used cars in different parts of India , sorted by model and location , in the second case Apnaloan.com - lenders compete against each other for your business and in the third case (Quotesmith.com), - a virtual comparative data bank of life insurance policies .

What does these three websites do to the used car salesman, the home loan dealer and the insurance policy seller ……the answer is makes him redundant !!!

Well when I spoke to my friend who is a senior consultant in the Big 4 , he said well “the Internet can make some kinds of experts redundant …not all ….we management consultants, accountants and lawyers will have no problems , the net can do no harm”.

For all of us who ascribe to this point of view here is another link which might surprise you (http://www.haygroup.com/ww/research/index.asp?Topic=2&Country=9&filterGo=Go)

these are research papers given out for free by HayGroup which is a leading global HR consulting firm . I wanted some information on Potential Assessment and in normal situation I would have sough the advise of an expert in the field , but I simply did a google with a few intelligent keywords and here I was with all the information I wanted on the subject to get me started ……..So in a nutshell , the Internet makes all of us so called experts redundant if we only trade in “information”

So where does this leave all of us (the so called experts ) , here are my suggestions and would like to hear from others as well

a) Migrate from providing information to dealing with insights (Insight defines as acute observation ,deduction; discernment; perception)

b) Recognize the predict the future of your chosen field of activity , rather than perpetually analyzing the past (past data , trends etc…this will help you be ahead of the information asymmetry game …)

I would like to conclude by saying that experts in almost all walks of life are threatened by the Internet and its time for us to reinvent ourselves and provide services that are not only based on data , but also on our insights and our abilities to predict the future than in dwelling in the past …….what do you think ? , like to hear from you ..?