The hardest economic question is, What comes next? What, in other words, are the new sources of economic value? How can businesses grow and our standard of living rise?
Sometimes the answer is simply more of the same. Growth comes from rolling out existing goods and services to new markets, until there’s a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. This kind of progress may be hard to achieve, but you at least start with a clear notion of what it would look like.
That’s why catch-up economies like China today or South Korea in the past can grow so fast. Their businesses don’t have to figure out what to make or sell. They know what’s possible by looking abroad, and have a reasonable idea of what consumers, local or international, want to buy. Refrigerators and air conditioning are popular; so are shampoo and disposable diapers.
At the economic frontier, the hardest question gets much harder. You no longer have a clear vision of the future. You know neither what’s possible nor what people want. You can only guess. Starbucks or FedEx may sound obvious in retrospect, but they were once crazy ideas.
Virginia Postrel, “Would Bogie Wear Gore-Tex?: The next big thing often consists of lots of little things”, Wall Street Journal, 2011-02-12
February 13, 2011
QotD: The hardest economic question is “What comes next?”
December 18, 2010
Interesting hand-powered table saw
I thought this was a joke . . . but those are some pretty impressive results shown in the video.
H/T to BoingBoing for the link.
June 3, 2010
$30 per barrel for diesel fuel?
Joule Unlimited claims to have developed a new single-cell plant which can produce diesel fuel from sunlight and carbon dioxide:
Henry Ford, the father of the modern assembly line, predicted a future where fuel would be mass-produced from natural materials like fruit, weeds, or even sawdust — renewable alternatives to finite fossil fuels. Still, one energy technology being developed by Joule Unlimited, a company in Cambridge, Mass., might have surprised even him: a plant that sweats diesel.
Plants use the sun to convert carbon dioxide into energy, but Joule has designed tiny, gene-altered organisms (essentially single-celled plants) that use the photosynthetic process to create liquid fuel. Stored in brackish water enclosed in glass panels, they grow for a few days before a genetic switch is flipped, diverting their energy toward fuel production. The diesel, which they pump out continuously, is circulated away to a separator, where it’s extracted and sent to a storage tank. After several weeks, the plants are flushed away and the process starts over again. These microscopic organisms can be genetically engineered to secrete diesel or other chemicals the company plans on commercializing; president and CEO Bill Sims calls the technology an “above-ground oil well.”
April 19, 2010
Sometimes simple ideas are best
A case where super-sizing is a good thing:
The product was inspired by a marine who, while serving in Somalia in 1993, thought it an obvious thing to have large size wipes. But there was no such product on the market. So the ex-marine took the idea to a friend who ran a gym, who then developed the product and found someone to manufacture it. All that took fifteen years, from the time the sweaty marine in Somalia got the idea.
Klenz Showers is a towel sized (2×4 feet/61x122cm) baby wipe. It was designed so that the package containing it fit into the pockets of field uniforms. The Klenz Showers wipe was large enough to clean yourself up, and feel refreshed. There was no scent, but there was aloe, so that the wipe helped heal the usual scrapes troops accumulated out in the bush. To keep the Klenz Showers light, you have to add four ounces (120ml) of water before using.
In the last two years, the Klenz Showers have become a major boost to morale, and cleanliness, for troops in Afghanistan, where many of them are out in the hills for weeks at a time. After ammo, water, batteries and food, the troops want their Klenz Showers packets.
Once you get past the initial “Dude, it’s a baby wipe” reaction, this is actually a really good idea.
February 26, 2010
US Navy SEAL teams to use British mini-sub
Lewis Page discovers that the latest minisub for the US Navy’s SEAL teams is actually made in Britain:
A groundbreaking new miniature submarine in use by the US Navy’s secretive, elite frogman-commando special operations force was actually designed and built in old Blighty, the Reg can reveal.
We reported first on the S301 mini-sub two weeks ago, noting from federal documents that the famous US Navy SEALs had leased a demonstration model for “doctrinal, operational, and organizational purposes”. This was followed up last week by the Honolulu Advertiser, which had spoken to Submergence Group, the American firm listed by the US government as provider of the S301.
It emerged that the S301 — now in trials with the SEALs in Hawaii — had cost just $10m to develop, which contrasted especially well with the $885m+ spent on the ill-fated Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS).
The ASDS, from US defence behemoth Northrop Grumman, had been intended to supersede the SEALs’ current Mark 8 Mod 1 minisubs, which are carried in a “Dry Deck Shelter” (DDS) airlock docking bay fitted to a full-sized US Navy nuclear submarine — either a normal attack boat or an Ohio-class dedicated Stingray-style special-ops mothership. The Ohios, nuclear missile subs retired from their old job under arms-reduction treaties, have space aboard for a large force of SEALs and pack a powerful armament of conventional-warhead cruise missiles for precision shore bombardment.
February 25, 2010
Design mistakes in consumer electronics
Benj Edwards looks at the long list of consumer electronic devices with design problems (most of which could have been avoided):
You saved and you saved until you could finally buy that shiny new $1000 gadget that promised you everything under the stars. When it came time to plug it in, you found your joy being subsumed by abject horror. Your stomach plunged deep into your gut and you (yes, mortal non-designer you) recognized a fundamental flaw in your flashy gizmo so obvious that it made you want to pick up the device and smash it over the designer’s head.
Even the best designers make mistakes . . . but this article isn’t about them. We’re about to, ahem, celebrate the worst consumer electronics designers through the lens of their faulty creations. Since I’m far from an all-knowing technology god, I’ve limited our survey to fifteen design problems that have not only bugged me through the years, but that are widespread enough to have bugged many of you too. These problems aren’t limited to current technology, but they all fall into the nebulous realm known as “consumer electronics.” You know: TVs, telephones, VCRs, DVD players, MP3 players, and more.
February 24, 2010
This sounds great . . . if it works as advertised
A freezer-sized box to provide power to 100 homes, running on renewable fuel? Sounds good, doesn’t it? If it turns out to be economical, practical, and efficient, it could be great:
A mini power station containing fuel cells that can run on anything from natural gas to the more renewable stuff, Bloom’s device has received the level of hype in Silicon Valley normally reserved for a new product from Apple.
For the past week, newspapers and websites have been filled with rumours about Bloom boxes, as the devices have been nicknamed, invented by former Nasa scientist KR Sridhar.
Fuel cells, which convert hydrogen and oxygen into electricity by an electrochemical process, are a promising source of energy while emitting less CO² and other pollutants, as well as being much more efficient, than burning. But most modern designs use expensive materials, such as platinum, or corrosive chemicals that shorten their lifespan.
At the heart of Sridhar’s device is a thin fuel cell made from a plentiful resource, sand. The size of a floppy disk, it is painted with proprietary inks that allow the fuels to react with oxygen from the air, a chemical process that produces electricity.
Bloom Energy claims that the boxes provide electricity at about half the cost of current conventional sources. Current customers include heavy hitters like Google, FedEx, WalMart, and Coca-Cola.
Of course, the company hasn’t been providing a lot of detailed technical information, so it’s not clear if this is one of the breakthroughs in electrical generation that will change everything, or if it’s another interesting blip that will quickly disappear.
Richard Miller, an innovation platform leader at the UK’s Technology Strategy Board, said Bloom Energy had yet to provide data to allow a fully informed decision on the value of its technology.
Update, 25 February: Alexis Madrigal says it’s too expensive for the current market conditions:
The analyst firm Lux Research posted a note to its blog today noting that Bloom had confirmed their 100-kilowatt boxes are priced between $700,000 and $800,000 without subsidies of any kind.
In fact, a long-term R&D collaboration between the Department of Energy and multiple solid-oxide fuel-cell manufacturers, the Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance, estimates that fuel cells will need to cost $700 per kilowatt of peak capacity to compete unsubsidized with the grid. Bloom’s product costs 10 times that.
“The cost is about an order of magnitude higher than it needs to be, to be truly competitive,” said Michael Tucker, a fuel cell scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
When you do the math, the Bloom box’s electricity costs substantially more per kilowatt hour than the grid.
“Without incentives, we calculate electricity would cost $0.13/kWh to $0.14/kWh, with about $0.09/kWh from system cost and about $0.05/kWh coming from fuel cost,” Lux wrote. “Note that this is high compared to average retail U.S. electricity costs of roughly $0.11/kWh.”
An order of magnitude more than conventional power? Yep, that qualifies as “spendy”.
December 15, 2009
The rise of California wine
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord.
October 2, 2009
The destruction of Saturn
Tim Cavanaugh looks at the GM division that once looked like the solution to so many of GM’s problems:
I would not recognize a Saturn if it ran me over, but the brand showed every sign of becoming competitive, with the above-mentioned loyal customers and policies on haggling and customer service that have (so I’m told, though I have seen first-hand evidence to the contrary) since become industry standards. Saturn was hamstrung by something not mentioned here: It was for girls.
Those “officials in charge of GM’s other brands” (and at the UAW, which never liked Saturn Corp.’s more flexible contract) were status-stunted males so disgusted by the idea of innovation that they consciously chose to starve something every normal retailer would give a limb for. Saturn customers didn’t just like the product but felt real fondness and familiarity toward the brand. And this wasn’t treated as an opportunity to exploit but a problem to be solved.
General Motors isn’t the only American company that can screw up a wet dream. It’s probably not even the screwup company that is getting the most taxpayer dollars to keep screwing up. But it’s the most toxic. What’s good for America is the total liquidation of General Motors and the firing of every person, labor and management, who works for the company.
The few folks I knew who bought early Saturn models seemed very happy with their vehicles, and remained that way . . . until Saturn became just another branch of General Motors. Then, for the most part, they appear to have moved on, but not to other GM vehicles.
September 25, 2009
Honda decides it’s sick of being seen as a cool company
Honda has introduced something to help it shed that coolness factor that’s been bothering it for a while. I guess they figured that Segway shouldn’t be the only company whose name is mocked for innovation in personal mobility:
Gentlemen, start your incredibly lazy engines: Honda has a new answer for those of us too tired to get off our keisters. Meet the U3-X “personal mobility device,” a unicycle-like ride that makes heading into the kitchen for pie as easy as — well, pie.
Sure to excite mall cops everywhere, the Honda U3-X makes the Segway look like an outdated piece of junk that no one in their right mind would ride. (Actually, the Segway already looked like that. Disregard.) The device is a 2-foot tall infinity-symbol lookalike with two pull-out pads for your tuchas. Marketed as a mobility device that “co-exists in harmony with people” — yes, seriously — the U3-X lets you hop a squat and zip around a room simply by shifting your body weight.
August 15, 2009
July 14, 2009
Monticello: Jefferson’s machine for living
While I enjoyed my visit and tour of Monticello, back in 2006, I didn’t get the full story. Wired tries to rectify that problem:
Thomas Jefferson loved new technology and modding his surroundings to his lifestyle. From food to comfort to efficiency, he was always looking for ways to improve his living space with inventions and hacks. If he were alive today, we like to think he’d be reading Wired.
Jefferson thought of his house, Monticello, as a machine for living. As such, it contains many insights into how a DIY gear-nut of today might have fared in the 18th Century.
“I would argue we are trying to debunk the madman-genius, nutty-professor image of Thomas Jefferson,” said Monticello curator Elizabeth Chew. “He is someone who was trying to adapt the latest technology in every realm of existence: science, how the house functions, in the garden. He is trying to put into use new ideas.”
(Cross-posted to the old blog, http://bolditalic.com/quotulatiousness_archive/005578.html.)
