If an Internet company is remotely "social" and even vaguely "media," it's going to be coming public in the next year or until retail investors stop bidding up new offerings, whichever comes last.

If you're looking for someone to decry this trend as a chilling portent of a stock market Armageddon to come, you're in the wrong place. The market is neither good nor bad. It just is. Specifically, the market is a no-holds-barred exercise in Darwinian survival of the fastest, smartest, coolest and best-informed. The stock market is also rigged in favor of those who have some sort of "in." Markets are and always have been tilted in favor of the most obsessed and capable players.

The most focused, knowledgeable and best players in both the last and coming IPO crazes are the venture capitalists and investment banks. The companies going public are almost irrelevant to the bankers and VCs. That doesn't make anyone involved in this system a bad person. A charitable organization would easily get

In a culture where outcries of short-sightedness are more prevalent than at a midtown Lenscrafters, the noble fix-it ideas of Wall Street critics often fall on deaf ears. "'Sure, we're not perfect but show me a better way,'' financial industry veterans often say.

And yet, with investor wrath in the post-crisis era high and showing no signs of abating, maybe —- just maybe —- the time is right for a re-think. At least Roger Martin thinks so, and he is using professional football is an example.