Disruptive versus Radical Innovations Clayton Christenson’s seminal The Innovator’s Dilemma is now 10 years old, and its central idea of “disruptive innovation” is now part of the everyday language of innovation. Recently, I finally read the book after having loosely tossed the term around for a few years. DriveNow: BMW / Sixt Joint Venture - car sharing The BMW Group and Sixt AG are planning a unique and innovative car sharing venture. With effect from April 2011 onwards – initially in Munich and later in Berlin – the two companies intend to join forces in offering a modern mobility concept under the brand-name DriveNow; this new product will combine vehicles and service of the highest quality with simple, flexible usage. DriveNow is the first car sharing concept to place an emphasis on efficient premium vehicles and comprehensive service. Vehicles may be hired and dropped off wherever the customer needs them, thus clearly differentiating DriveNow from products offered by other competitors. Sixt AG and the BMW Group intend to bundle their car sharing activities in the DriveNow joint venture, in which each company will hold a 50 percent stake.
Academic New Landmark Libraries 2016 Walking Tour: Introduction The announcement of LJ‘s 2016 academic New Landmark Libraries gave us an opportunity to showcase exemplary design and service in academic libraries. Upon getting the list of winners and honorable mentions, I realized five of the eight libraries were located in areas through which I would be traveling on a planned trip from New Jersey to North Carolina. I couldn’t pass up the chance to see the libraries in person, so I pitched the idea of a road trip/tour to my editors: to visit each library and take photos to supplement our coverage.
Exiting The Anthropocene and Entering The Symbiocene. Exiting The Anthropocene It has been proposed that humans are now living within a period of the Earth’s history appropriately named ‘The Anthropocene’ (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). The name is derived from the observed human influence and indeed dominance of all climatic, biophysical and evolutionary processes occurring at a planetary scale. Meta-currency - Rheonomy - Eric Harris-Braun In her beautifully insightful book, The Nature of Economies, Jane Jacobs suggests that we must broaden our understanding of economics in the context of the flow processes of the natural world. Near the end of the book one of her characters asks the question, “What are economies for?” One of the other characters answers:
Panarchy Panarchy What is Panarchy? Panarchy is a conceptual framework to account for the dual, and seemingly contradictory, characteristics of all complex systems – stability and change. It is the study of how economic growth and human development depend on ecosystems and institutions, and how they interact. It is an integrative framework, bringing together ecological, economic and social models of change and stability, to account for the complex interactions among both these different areas, and different scale levels (see Scale Levels).
The connected company Many thanks to Thomas Vander Wal for the many conversations that inspired this post. The average life expectancy of a human being in the 21st century is about 67 years. Do you know what the average life expectancy for a company is? Surprisingly short, it turns out. Darwin's Wedge & Dumb Competition “Competition creates efficiency,” is preached as if it were a law of nature. But nature itself teaches a different lesson. Biological competition can create foolish costs, and collective doom. “Darwin’s Wedge” shows why and reminds us of the point of being human. Our competitions, and the myopic logic of free markets, needn’t be dumb as trees.
A New Economic System for a World in Rapid Disintegration (Photo: Antoine Collet; Edited: LW / TO) We live in ominously dangerous times. The world capitalist system -- having fueled colonialism, imperialism and the constant intensification of labor power exploitation for roughly 500 years -- now threatens the planet with an ecological collapse of unprecedented proportions. Unsustainable resource exploitation, water pollution (the transformation of lakes, rivers and oceans into garbage dumps) and massive economic inequality are at the root of the possibly irreversible collapse of industrial civilization. Meanwhile, however, too many of us remain caught up in abstract and ahistorical predictions of collapse that fail to offer an alternative realistic vision of a future socio-economic order. Nonetheless, the catastrophic scenario sketched out behind the operations of global capitalism does not merely represent the other side of a wild socio-economic system bent on constant and abstract growth in pursuit of ever greater rates of profit.