MIT Press
Key takeaways from What 250 Years of Innovation History Reveals About Our Green Future
If history is any indication, an unstoppable wave of competitive innovations is heading our way again. Open at source
Most highlighted
As do our jobs. Our answers to that old question “What do you do?” change: “I design webpages and facilitate SoMe.” That would be social media, by the way. In 1995, both the job itself and the answer would be utter gibberish. With each technical wave also come new social discourses.
At the time of writing, the five largest companies by market capitalization in the world are from the fifth wave: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. Among the companies that owned the fossil-fuel industrial age, only ExxonMobil is large enough to hang on among the very top tiers of global corporations.
not just because Ford, IBM, Kodak, Walmart, and Shell have been shortsighted. It is largely because each new wave fundamentally changes the value-creation logic throughout the economy. Hence deeply ingrained business models “suddenly” shift from leading markets to becoming a drag. A business model is sometimes compared to cell DNA: It hardly changes when the organization is well established. It is deeply embedded in its organizational culture, reproducing itself. When its surrounding industrial ecosystem shifts, rather than rapidly adapting, it loses out to invasive and competing species that suddenly threaten to take over.
Your notes & highlights
Save highlights in Reader View or with our Chrome extension.
This your link? Claim it
