Jigsaw, 60,000 users, 3,000,000+ names

As of April 2006, Jigsaw (a different sort of Linkedin) had already gathered 60,000 users and over 3 million names in its databases.

The really interesting innovation here is that they somehow managed to outsource the marketing (i.e. generating potential clients) and the production (i.e. building the databases) to its users.

Since business is all about 1. marketing 2. selling and 3. production, Jigsaw therefore managed to outsource 66% of its operations!

This is truly a frightening business model, which resembles eBay in that users actually create the content that constitutes value.

However, eBay doesn't reward users for bringing in new users.

The success secret here is that competition will be more and more about "business model innovation," something that strategy guru Michael Porter has already mentioned.

But what about professionals or people who are not in business for themselves?

There's what I would call "professional model innovation." It's about how to design new ways and channels through which you can deliver your professional knowledge, knowhow, skills, etc. to a potentially limitless audience via the Web.

More on that later.