The winner-take-most statistical power law effect we’ve seen in many emerging business categories is a phenomenon that network scientists have noticed in their natural investigations for some time. It is a trait in certain business models where network effects can reinforce a market presence, sometimes exponentially and to the marginalized exclusion of competitors who are relegated to a long (and narrow) tail, which is dreaded. The Big 5 techs, so-called, are more truly the Big 5 networks (in the broad sense), and it apparently will take some kind of intervention to keep their dominance in check. There are other examples.
An overlooked example in this way of seeing the network power law phenomenon in market presence, is on the funding side of the equation. That is to say, there is a winner-take-most parallel in financial markets, which has as much to do with the nature of the underlying business target as it does with the network nature of the markets themselves. Bubbles form sometimes, concentrations gather, attention focuses or fades, and thus the masses of financial capital shape similar leaderboard formations at all their many levels. The portfolio positions of fund managers tend to overlap, the structure of securities go in and out of fashion, certain institutions amass growing troves, and so on etc. (The wealth gap that is growing, perhaps, is also part of the event and its network effect drivers.)
And just as the individual products, messages or links that pass through the Big 5 networks (and others) tend to commoditization by sheer undifferentiated volume in these network concentrations, it’s possible to see financial flows and products the same way. That is to say, the financial category and its varied funding elements that accumulate, are contributing to the cheapening of these, if you will. And the return opportunity fades.
In this context, some news items from the financial press the other day, which, like everything described herein, is a participant in the gatherings.
Speculative Fiction 