Listen to business professionals talk enough, and you'll hear them speak about the "marketplace" as though it is an actual, geographical place where goods and services are bought and sold. You'll then hear them talk about today's marketplace being a "global" one, meaning apparently that this place exists all over the world. Really? While the idea that the marketplace being an actual, single place may have been true a couple thousand years ago (images of a noisy, colorful bazaar come to mind), today that description not only misses the mark; it cripples us in our capacity to move our enterprises forward.

Why?

Because the marketplace is not a PLACE; it's a thing.And that thing is a discussion; a series of ongoing, organic, and evolving conversations happening everywhere in real time.The marketplace is the sum total of the conversations around offers...offers about businesses and brands...offers made and either accepted, rejected, or countered. Maybe a better description for it would be the market discussion?

The sooner we understand buying decisions are made through conversations and word of mouth, not at a place, the better we'll be at listening, noticing, and observing those conversations. Whether they take place in online social networks, or offline at the grocery store check out, it is those conversations, one by one, that form the market discussion, and in so doing move the global economy.