In a previous post I defined the expert-centric universe as one in which “the individual expert has become the center of attention, rather than the organization.” What does that mean in practice? Well, let’s take the example of Kobe Bryant.

He recently re-introduced his website using a subscription – $49.95 a year. Membership includes access to “exclusive content, including videos, audio and photos” and has a SKU number. The site, as of this writing, is in beta.

Clearly Mr. Bryant is an expert in what he does. He has decided that access to himself – the expert – in the digital world is worth $49.95 per year. This is an example of the expert-centric universe in practice – the Subscriptions-to-Individuals (STI) model.

Can experts of all stripes center themselves around an organization of one and sell subscriptions to themselves?

Well, they could – the digital world tools to build that “organization of one” – each one a component of the “expert-centric universe” – by Digital Inhabitants are now here and freely available (to those with access to those digital world tools, a subset of those with Internet access – 1.6 billion out of the 6.7 billion world population est. 2008 – stat from Internet World Stats).

Would they want to? Well, there are lots of questions, such as:

• How do I become an expert sufficiently well known that anyone will actually subscribe?
• What price point will work?
• Can I make a living from subscriptions to myself alone?

and one longer term one:

• What happens to organizations?

And as an example – what happens to newspapers? More on that soon.

In general, does the organizational back-end infrastructure or even the front-end support mean that the STI model is a non-starter? Don’t know. Yet. More research needed. Maybe the whole STI model just won’t work.

But Mr. Bryant seems to think it can.