Umair Haque, whom I’ve referenced before, has a nice post echoing some of the sentiments expressed here and at a growing number of other places – namely that a new economy needs both new financing models and some more creativity. In Yorkshire we’d say it was a clapped out old nag that was only fit for the knackers yard, but here’s that translated into Harvard Business School speak

We can’t reinvent the economy without, well, investing in reinventing the economy. So here’s a distinction you might want to draw. VC 1.0: “monetizing”, aka selling the same old mass-produced junk to tuned-out “consumers”. VC 2.0: seeding better economies, industries, and markets for a 21st century bereft of value creation, aka radical structural transformation.

The problem is, of course, that venture capital is a very hidebound industry, if it was a person you’d expect it to be shouting at the television and complaining about the age of policemen and the things the younger generation get up to. Venture capital is a 20th century industry perhaps as ill equipped for the current age as General Motors, and there seems to be a growing sentiment that it is a model that should either gracefully retire, or at least transform itself into something more relevant to the 21st Century.