Ikool’s Blogbed

A Manifesto for the Next Industrial Revolution

21st century capitalism needs a revolution. How does growth happen – from a strategic point of view? The great Joseph Schumpeter argued that growth happens through a process of creative destruction. There’s a simpler word for that: turbulence.

Google utilized a market – AdWords – to utterly eviscerate a stale, broken media value chain. Here’s a more visceral example. Muhammad Yunus revolutionized finance – not by collecting more money to lend, but by using communities to fundamentally alter the value equation of lending to the poor. The result was industry transformation.

The revolution needs revolutionaries. Today’s investors, boardrooms and entrepreneurs are looking for value in all the wrong places. Facebook’s game of musical chairs won’t solve big economic problems – and neither will making token investments in greentech.

Where is the next industrial revolution crying out for revolutionaries? Simple: in industries dominated by clear, durable, structural barriers to efficiency and productivity.

The next industrial revolution begins here. What happens when we think of using new DNA to reorganize structurally inefficient industries? A blueprint for the next industrial revolution emerges. Here’s what it looks like.

Organize the world’s hunger.
Organize the world’s energy.
Organize the world’s thirst.
Organize the world’s health.
Organize the world’s freedom.
Organize the world’s finance.
Organize the world’s education.

That’s not an exhaustive list – it’s just a beginning. In fact, let’s open source it: please add to it (“organize the world’s xyz”), and we’ll keep an index here or elsewhere.

Read On …

June 25, 2008 - Posted by ikool | Opinions | | No Comments Yet

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