It’s fair to say that, in more ways than one, 2009 was a year full of challenges. But it was not without its rewards.

Perhaps the greatest personal satisfaction for me was the huge amount of progress we made with iWantMyName, our first (and by no means last) spin-off project from ideegeo. But during 2009 many establishment organisations simply ran out of good ideas and took short-sighted decisions to make layoffs, rather than use their existing human capital to innovate and prepare for the upturn.

So it was a great source of pride at ideegeo that we not only earned some export dollars this year, but we also added employees and extended our product offering. All this was achieved without needing to raise capital and under the dark clouds of the harshest global economic conditions that most of us have known.

Clearly, recovery from the recession in 2010 will not originate at the hands of tired, greedy old firms that treat their human assets like factory farmed cows. The recovery will come from small, agile, innovative new ventures that can grasp opportunities and quickly add value. The corporate model is dying a slow death as internal divisions, failure to innovate and lack of a sense of responsibility to the community eats away at its heart. 

This fact was illustrated powerfully in 2009 as traditional media corporations struggled to come to terms with the new environment and as morally corrupt financial institutions paid bonuses to managers, even as governments were bailing them out of irrecoverable losses. In short it was a sorry state of affairs for big business and hopefully we will see some better leadership on this front in 2010.

Another major theme for business in 2009 was the coming of age of hosted software. The “cloud” services scene was boosted by aggressive competition from Google, rapid improvements in the scalability and reliability of hardware and an enthusiastic user base. Fortunately, at iWantMyName we were able to leverage this sea change by offering free customisation for our customers across a wide range of popular applications. 2010 looks exciting too as we add more services and scale up through partnerships and organic growth.

All the very best for a safe and enjoyable festive season and thanks for reading @GeniusNet.