A quick link to an article in The Economist on a topic that we’ve explored many times for different clients, starting back in 2007 for the Shell Technology Futures programme.
The factory of the future will focus on mass customisation—and may look more like those weavers’ cottages than Ford’s assembly line.
via Manufacturing: The third industrial revolution | The Economist.
This is a fascinating view of macro scale changes from a very unlikely source – an ex-senior official in the CIA Clandestine Service. His comments echo some of my recent thinking about the potential impact when social movements meet social media, and the impact upon modern-day governance structures. Here’s the view of Henry Crumpton (with my emphasis in bold):
The most important change on the global security and business stage is the empowerment of the individual and their ability to have inexpensive, exponential impact through technology and collaboration. This revolutionary development has led to an unprecedented shift in relationships, with a degree of asymmetric power never seen in the history of human conflict or commerce. There are micro actors with macro impact operating on a global landscape and they constantly challenge the status quo, and this trend is accelerating.
Andrew Zolli, the organiser of the PopTech conference has just published a book about resilience. Given I’m living in a city that was hit hard by a series of quakes last year the topic is very interesting to me. It’s also interesting from the point of view of foresight, and outlines an approach that is a necessary response to a world increasingly characterised by complexity and volatility:
One of the things that we could see happening very clearly was–and this was the observation that led directly to the book–was that organizations of very different kinds were all converging to the same core observations,” he says. “That was that the sustainability framework, which was based on what you might call ‘risk mitigation,’ was coming to an end and that we were increasingly headed toward a world of ‘risk adaptation.’
A quick link to something that has been discernible for a a while, and something that was clearly identified when we ran Future Agenda two years ago. However now the clever (and time rich) analysts at McKinsey has quantified it:
A thousand years ago, the economic centre of the world was in central Asia, just north of India and west of China, reflecting the high levels of wealth enjoyed in the Middle and Far East at that time, says the report, Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class. At that time, Asia accounted for two-thirds of the world’s wealth.
By 1900, the centre had shifted to northern Europe, which had leapt far ahead of the rest of the world thanks to the Industrial Revolution. And by 1950, the centre had shifted to the North Atlantic, reflecting the economic rise of the United States.
But now that trend is reversing itself, and at a stunning speed. What took 1,000 years to travel west will have travelled all the way back east in a matter of a few decades.
According to the McKinsey report, the economic centre of gravity has been shifting east for the past decade at a rate of 140 km (87 miles) per year, and by 2025, it will have returned to a spot in central Asia just north of where it was in 1,000 A.D.
“It is not hyperbole to say we are observing the most significant shift in the earth’s economic centre of gravity in history,”
via World’s Economic Centre Of Gravity Shifting Back To Asia At Unbelievable Speed: McKinsey Institute.
It can be quite tricky to involve creative and non-linear thinkers in your organisational structure. Many people that fit in this category prefer to have wide-ranging remits that don’t fit the normal hierarchical structures. Fresh research (indeed it’s work-in-progress) from HBS supports this and sums up it up in the context of distributed innovation:
Many creative problem-solvers will not or simply cannot work effectively under standard employment or supply contracts. That is why distributed innovation in a business ecosystem is such a desirable organizational form.
via Organization Design for Distributed Innovation — HBS Working Knowledge.
Another lovely example of how it’s the innovation that happens outside the core that’s usually the most interesting. After all, cutting edge research in space propulsion is the domain of heavily funded Government labs right?
19-year-old Egyptian physics student Aisha Mustafa is someone we may see again in the media in the future because though young she’s patented a new type of propulsion system for spacecraft that makes use of an obscure, and only recently experimentally proven, quantum physics effect.
via Mustafa’s Space Drive: An Egyptian Student’s Quantum Physics Invention | Fast Company.
There’s something to watch here: a young, rich and glamourus woman spurns her roots and becomes a poster child for change. She knows how to cross both the digital and real worlds for impact, and clearly understands the system she exists within.
The pampered “it girl” of Putin’s Russia, author of “Philosophy in the Boudoir” and “How to Marry a Millionaire,” has restyled herself as a leader of the opposition. Last week, Ms. Sobchak hosted protest leaders on her new political talk show, which was canceled by Russia’s MTV after just one episode and is now broadcast on a Web site.
(via Kseniya Sobchak, Russia’s ‘It Girl,’ Dons Opposition Cloak – NYTimes.com.)
I’m increasingly interested in how social movements and social media will intersect, and the implications for power brokers (both government and non-government). I think there’s something here in social movements getting digital smarts and becoming digital movements (think rapid scale, emergence ‘from nowhere” and clear actions). Watch this space…
A short snippet from an article in the Economist that links a new hobby of ‘tinkering’ with possible disruption. This is something that we could easily see a few years back and identified as part of the Shell Technology Futures programme in 2007. It’s fascinating to see it unfolding:
“The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit,” writes Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine.
It is easy to laugh at the idea that hobbyists with 3D printers will change the world. But the original industrial revolution grew out of piecework done at home, and look what became of the clunky computers of the 1970s. The maker movement is worth watching.
via Monitor: More than just digital quilting | The Economist.
Quick update that has implications for distributed manufacturing, supply chains and last, but not least, intellectual property:
The Pirate Bay, announced a new, legitimate direction yesterday: It’s going to host physibles, downloadable models for constructing 3D objects.
The Pirate Bay’s move into physibles breaks new ground, since 3D printing is territory copyright lawyers have barely begun to fathom.
A “physible” is a digital plan for an object that can either be designed on a computer or uploaded with a 3D scanner. Those plans can be downloaded and used to assemble real, tangible objects using a 3D printer. Printers are getting more affordable, but they’re still limited by the kinds of materials they can use. But that just means it’s the dawn of this technology, and The Pirate Bay is getting in early. “We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare [parts] for your vehicles,” TPB writes on its blog. “You will download your sneakers within 20 years.”
via Forget MP3s: Soon You’ll Download Your Sneakers From The Pirate Bay.
The topic of serendipity and technology was raised again recently in The Atlantic, with one writer pointing out that the advent of the GPS on phones, combined with services such as Yelp, increase the filtering process that in turn lessens the chance of accidental discovery:
Everywhere you go these days, people are waving their phones around like dowsing devices, trying to find a place to eat, or a subway stop, or a bookstore. Are they finding them? Yes. My question is, what are they not finding? What serendipitous journeys are they not taking?
via GPS, Smartphones, and the Dumbing Down of Personal Navigation – Technology – The Atlantic Cities.
It’s an interesting segue back to my blog post below which outlines three simple ways to increase serendipity in your life.
