The Booz & Co perspective paper The Rise of Generation C is well worth a skim to consider its implications for financial reporting and financial information transparency generally.

Just what will it mean to the management and communication of financial content when the next generation of financial information consumers are ‘on the grid 24/7′ and ‘social animals’ and when ‘nonlinear information consumption’ is the norm and the ‘benefits of transparency are seen to outweigh the risks’?

These implications are why it will become increasingly meaningless to consider financial information as somehow ‘privileged’ in any way; rather than as just another form of content that can be shared, enhanced, combined and generally crowdsourced just like any other kind of ‘idea’ in order to add value.

The key step to take is to think of a financial statement not as some kind of fixed ‘report’ but as an idea that has potential and possibilities for innovation. The kind of shift that views a balance sheet not as a fixed presentation of assets, liabilities and equity but as one of many corporate information ‘sandboxes’ that can be crowdsourced for business model improvement.