This was the white heat of technology and it ignited an explosion of knowledge and political discourse across Europe that changed the course of that civilisation.
In 1993, the first graphical web browser was launched. Later that year, the first commercial website, for the Digital Equipment Corp, was launched, and within just seven years, there were 17.5m websites. Fast-forward five years, through the dotcom crash, and there were 65m websites.
When printing came to Britain, the change it wrought was far-reaching, but gradual. The change we are experiencing now is just as far-reaching, but immeasurably faster. The internet has caused markets to be created, subverted and destroyed. It has introduced competitors, fresh business models and new channels to market. The ability it gives people to communicate and share information has caused an unprecedented surge in creativity and innovation in businesses, as people rush to take advantage of new opportunities and others scurry to defend positions.
Ten years ago, we typically looked at sources of sustainable competitive advantage in terms of processes and functional components of the business mix - the ability to make widgets cheaper because of a patent or through the control of particular channels to market.
Now we need to look deeper to see where organisations' winning characteristics lie. In this era of hypercompetition, firms increasingly derive advantages from the skills they deploy - and in a period of intense change, the most important is the ability to innovate.
This trend has already begun, spurred on by globalisation, consumer choice and deregulation. But the internet has accelerated it and multiplied its effects.
The capacity to evolve rapidly to thrive in new market environments, to respond to fresh consumer demand and to exploit new models is what sets the winners apart. Google adopted a charging model from a competitor, but added it to a superior search product; eBay exploited the power of online community by adding it to an auction site; and Amazon invented the affiliate market, beating wealthier competitors by creating huge distribution at minimal cost.
These companies demonstrate an ability to innovate, and each prizes its ability to do so over time, devoting significant resource to the continuous development of new products.
But in the digital age, innovation is not something that just happens at this macro corporate level. Testing of new techniques, approaches and even media selections should be part of business at every level.
In the media and marketing world, this is not simply a pursuit of innovation for its own sake. The reality is that single-mindedly chasing the lowest-cost conversions means you paint yourself into a corner, with no options for development when the market is disrupted by a new dynamic.
Your competitors, the media environment, individual publishers and your audience change all the time, and what failed to work three months ago might work today. The successful web campaign continuously tests fresh approaches, because they offer the potential to deliver an edge.
Ultimately, that is what we all want - an edge; having a competitive advantage, knowing that we know something our competitors don't, something we can exploit for a while until they catch up, at which point we'll already be off doing something else.
There is a natural tendency to do what worked before, and that is exactly what many agencies and advertisers continue to do. But trying new things is not just a strategy for competitive advantage today - it is a strategy for survival.
Andrew Walmsley is co-founder of i-level
30 SECONDS ON ... WILLIAM CAXTON
- William Caxton was born in 1422 in Kent and died in 1492.
- He went to London at the age of 16 to become an apprentice to a cloth merchant and later moved to Bruges, where he became an important member of the merchant community.
- From 1462 to 1470 he served as governor of the English Nation of Merchant Adventurers, representing his fellow merchants, as well as being a diplomat for the king.
- Caxton's own translation of The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye was the first book printed in the English language.
- In 1476 he returned to London and established a press at Westminster, the first printing press in England producing chivalric romances, classical-authored works, and English and Roman histories.
- He printed more than 100 books in his lifetime.
- The most important works printed by Caxton were Le Morte d'Arthur and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.