Mario (el general romano) y la innovación

Tal parece que Roma en la época de la República tenía un ethos muy conservador: la innovación era mal vista, cultivar las tradiciones -para que nada cambiara- el mandato.

Mario, por su parte, fue tal vez el mejor general de toda la historia guerrera de Roma, que por cierto duró mil años. Mario les enseñó a los romanos el valor de la innovación; y lo hizo de un modo dramático.

Resulta que una de las armas más poderosas de las legiones de Roma eran unas lanzas que volaban raudas y precisas hacia el enemigo, y que al caer era casi seguro que causaran la muerte de uno o más soldados entre sus filas. Sin embargo, los enemigos de Roma, que también se las traían pronto aprendieron a compensar sus pérdidas: tomaban la lanza una vez arrojada por los romanos, desde el suelo o desde el cadáver del caido y con la misma fiereza la devolvían hacia las legiones; como el arma seguía siendo mortal, causaba ahora importantes pérdidas también entre quienes se suponía que poseían (en exclusiva) la ventaja (técnica y logística en la batalla).

La propuesta innovadora de Mario fue muy simple, técnicamente resuelta rápidamente, y previno muchas muertes en lo sucesivo entre las legiones: la punta de la lanza, una vez cumplido su mortal cometido, debería desprenderse irremediablemente del resto del cuerpo del arma, impidiendo así su reuso inmediato :-)

***

¡Innovas o mueres!

El otro "costo" de la innovación

No innovar nos cuesta:

No disfrutar más.
No lograr ventaja competitiva; (eventualmente) no sobrevivir.
No poder ahorrar tiempo.
No dar a surgir nuevos hábitos/usos.
No crear riqueza.
No llegar a ser un campeón de la innovación :-)

Scribd (la innovación de los "tipos móviles" en el siglo XXI)

Aquí su página en la Web, que para este caso es la compañía toda (en la Web)

Aquí el ejemplo:

Looking Further with Ford: 13 Trends for 2013

***

"Scribd is the world's largest online library. We've made it easy to share and discover entertaining, informative and original written content across the web and mobile devices."

***
De la Wikipedia:

"La idea de Scribd fue originalmente inspirada cuando Trip Adler estuvo en Harvard y tuvo una conversación con su padre, John R. Adler sobre las dificultades de la publicación de artículos académicos. Se asoció con los cofundadores Jared Friedman y Tikhon Bernstam y asistieron a Y Combinator en Cambridge en el verano de 2006. Scribd fue liberado desde un apartamento de San Francisco en marzo de 2007 y creció rápidamente en tráfico. En 2008, figuraba como uno de los 20 sitios de redes sociales según más visitados según Comscore.4 En Junio de 2009, Scribd lanzó Scribd Store.5 Poco después se resindió el contrato con Simon & Schuster para vender libros electrónicos en Scribd.6 Más de 150 editores profesionales como Random House, Wiley, Workman, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson, Harvard University Press y Stanford University Press están ahora asociados con Scribd. ProQuest comenzó publicando disertaciones en Scribd en diciembre de 2009. En octubre de 2009, Scribd lanzó su lector de marca para las compañías de medios con New York Times , Los Angeles Times , Chicago Tribune , The Huffington Post, TechCrunch y MediaBistro.7 Ahora más de 100 compañías de medios utilizan lectores de marca Scribd para incrustar material de origen en sus historias. En agosto de 2010, las noticias comenzaron a hacer "un boom" y los documentos y los libros empezaron a ser virales en Scribd incluyendo el volcado de Proposición 8 y la demanda de HP, Mark Hurd, que se mueven en contra de Oracle. Actualmente Adler es el presidente de Scribd, donde es el responsable del producto y de la dirección estratégica de la de la empresa. El BusinessWeek llamado Adler es uno de los "Mejores Jóvenes Empresarios Tech de 2010"

***

¿Cómo agrega valor una casa editorial que sólo publica en la Web?

Aquí la explicación resumida

MOOC (massive open online courses): innovación en el aula de clases

Aquí la entrada desde Knowledge@Wharton

Extracto introductorio:

"During the past decade, the distribution of content over the Internet and its consumption on computers and mobile devices has disrupted several industries -- newspapers, book publishing, music and films, among others. Now education joins that list, thanks to the emergence of massive open online courses, or MOOCs. These courses, which are offered for free to tens of thousands of students, cover topics ranging from artificial intelligence and computer science to music and poetry appreciation. As millions of students around the world flock to participate in MOOCs, universities are being compelled to rethink what it means to teach and to learn in a networked, globally connected world. During the past 18 months, many educational institutions have initiated or joined ventures that can help them explore, experiment in and gradually understand this phenomenon."

***

Algunos comentarios a la carrera:

1. Sin duda son muchos los que, no habiendo antes logrado acceder al aula tradicional de alta calidad, apreciarán en mucho así mismo poder hacerlo ahora, no obstante la "virtualidad implícita".

2. Las universidades tienen un gran reto que resolver, que es así mismo una oportunidad que se les abre; por ej: 1) los MOOC pueden ser vistos como el abrebocas que motive luego la matrícula tradicional, 2) los MOOC pueden ser vistos como el equivalente a las ediciones "paperback" en los libros, 3) los MOOC pueden llegar a ser el nuevo currículo para un sinmúmero de oficios y profesiones, aún más especializadas que las que ya conocemos.

3. Lo de "masivo" en MOOC no debe ser confundido con "lo mismo para todos", al contrario, los MOOC pueden ser la vía, la primera etapa, el camino hacia, una educación personalizada en extremo, esto es, adaptada al ser de cada quien y no como es ahora, que cada quien se adapta (o "fracasa") al modelo disponible :-)

El DNA de los Innovadores (9): "Many innovators hit on an innovative idea while taking something apart"

Aquí su página en Amazon

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeff Dyer (Author)
Hal Gregersen (Author)
Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

***

Un gran regalo para su hijo esta Navidad : ¡Un kit de destornilladores! :-)

Innovation from Chile: Cumplo, Nicolás Shea (fundador)

Aquí el sitio web de la compañía

"Cumplo es una plataforma de confianzas, de personas. La razón por la cual existimos es porque hay millones de chilenos que diariamente pagan costos que no merecen, ya sea a través de mayores intereses en sus créditos o menores retornos en sus ahorros" Nicolás Shea, Fundador de Cumplo

Más de Big Data: "Senseable City Lab"

Aquí



***

"The real-time city is now real! The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed - alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure.

Studying these changes from a critical point of view and anticipating them is the goal of the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

"Uber" innovation: Travis Kalanick

Aquí el artículo original desde Knowledge@Wharton

Extracto introductorio:

"Travis Kalanick is no stranger to corporate fisticuffs. The tech entrepreneur brought down the wrath of the film and music industries after starting a peer-to-peer service in 1998 called Scour, which was similar to Napster in that it allowed consumers to swap digital media files with each other. Two years later, filmmakers and TV producers sued his company for copyright infringement to the tune of $250 billion. Scour went out of business.

Kalanick later developed a content delivery system that he called his "revenge business" because, ironically, some of his former entertainment industry foes ended up becoming clients, according to a February article in Fortune. While this company, Red Swoosh, initially ran into financial problems, it would be sold for $15 million to Akamai Technologies in 2007 -- but not before Kalanick became so destitute that he had to move in with his mother. Fortune described the 30-something UCLA dropout as "brilliant," but "brash and headstrong" and "happy to charge off a cliff with an innovative idea."

He seems to be charging headlong off that cliff again with his latest venture, Uber. The three-year-old San Francisco start-up provides private car service -- mostly using a fleet of higher-end vehicles, including sleek black Lincoln town cars but also taxis -- to customers who love the site's white-glove service and do not mind the premium pricing. Riders summon the cars using a smartphone app. But the company also has attracted the ire of municipalities such as New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Officials in those cities say Uber's service runs afoul of local rules designed to ensure pricing transparency and public safety, among other allegations. Moreover, Uber is also fighting a lawsuit filed by taxi companies."

***

¿Qué se puede anotar?

1. Que en todas partes se "cuecen habas"; ingenuamente pensaba que el tema-problema de la intervención-regulación al servicio de Taxis era sólo de por acá, del mundo del subdesarrollo :-/

2. Que la tecnología (as usual) sigue siendo la fuerza monumental cuando se trata de "poner patas arriba" (y así eventualmente mejorar) un producto/servicio anquilosado en privilegios y bajo el sopor de la falta de competidores :-)

3. Que a los innovadores de verdad (como a Travis Kalanick) no sólo los distingue todo lo que ya se ha dicho aquí y en muchas partes sobre su creatividad y coraje, sino además su total disposición a (pase lo que pase) re-escribir las "reglas"; o mejor, eliminarlas del todo; lo que sin duda los hace más simpáticos aún (para el suscrito :-)

Un decálogo para emprendedores innovadores

Aquí la página de Apps.co de dónde fue tomada

"Nosotros los emprendedores Apps.co creemos en:

1.El riesgo como tu compañero de aventura, lo que es Robin a Batman o Pinky a Cerebro.

2.La necesidad de revisar muy bien tu emprendimiento si crees que lo único que necesitas es dinero.

3.Que tu éxito depende de tu capacidad de probar y validar tus hipótesis en el mercado, trabajar en red y crear comunidades.

4.Apasionarse por el emprendimiento. Pero no dejar que está sea la única consejera en la toma de tus decisiones. La razón y la perseverancia te llevan a materializar tu pasión y tener resultados.

5.Que si creas una propuesta de valor que apasione tanto a tus clientes no podrán imaginar sus días sin ti.

6.Que el camino al éxito está pavimentado con lecciones de aquellos que fallaron y aprendieron de sus errores. Fallar es clave, si no lo haces duda de tu emprendimiento.

7.Las ideas compartidas se enriquecen y multiplican. Escondidas se debilitan y mueren.

8.Que la creatividad e innovación te ayudan a descubrir los caminos. La creatividad ilumina tu camino y el aprendizaje continuo afirma tus pasos.

9.Que las intuiciones no son negocios, los negocios se construyen con perseverancia, trabajo duro y pasión.

10.Que el tamaño del reto es directamente proporcional a los desafíos que tienes que enfrentar y a las recompensas que podrás obtener."

***

¿Y quién califica como emprendedor innovador?

R/ El que no se rinde jamás: lo logra, o, (triste pero valientemente) perece en el esfuerzo :-)

Investigación de Mercados y Big Data

Aquí la entrada completa desde Innovations Tools

Extracto introductorio:

"The combination of Big Data and ethnographics can be a potent toolset for uncovering innovation opportunities, as a growing number researchers are discovering.

For many years, marketing has been in love with Big Data as a means of discerning what customers want and delivering products and services to them. In this role, it has been a lagging indicator, telling us what consumers are doing and have done, but it has been of limited utility by itself as a driver of innovation.

At the same time, ethnography has been growing in importance as a tool to "go deep" and understand what challenges customers are having by observing them in their natural environment. Often, this illuminates jobs to be done and pain points that cannot be discovered in any other way. This type of input tends to be more reliable than focus groups, where customers are brought into a sanitized environment and asked a series of questions. Taking them out of the context in which they use a product tends to skew their answers, and once again is backward looking. Consumers can easily tell us what they are using and doing today, but are notoriously bad at articulating what their unmet or future needs may be. For example, a focus group could have never envisioned the Apple iPhone."

***

Parece como si finalmente todo el esfuerzo (de algunos pioneros) de construir una ciencia desde el marketing, una que resuelva óptimamente, velozmente, y continuamente las "necesidades básicas" del ser humano, estuviera coronando. Son buenas noticias sin duda, porque resuelto lo anotado, quizá podamos finalmente empezar a ver más allá del agite diario del sueño y los apetitos, con unos ojos y una visión que hasta ahora no hemos tenido; que no han tenido tampoco los que desde siempre han dormido y apetecido en calma :-)

Tele[a distancia]Comunicación - Innovación - Local[cerca]ización

Aquí el reciente Special Report from The Economist: A sense of place

Extracto introductorio:

"THERE WAS SOMETHING odd about the black car at the junction of Sutter and Hyde Streets. It was an ordinary saloon. Its windows were clear, and it looked in good condition. And yet, as the lights changed and the car pulled away into the bright San Francisco morning, a question remained. Why was it sporting a luxuriant pink moustache at its front?

The moustache is the trade mark of Lyft, a ride-sharing service that began in the city this summer. Its drivers are private individuals who, in effect, rent out seats in their cars for a few dollars a time. Lyft’s cut is 20%. It works through a smartphone app. When you register as a customer, you supply your phone number and credit-card details. When you want a ride, you open the app and see a map with the locations of the nearest moustachioed motors. You tap to request a ride, and the app shows you your driver’s name, his rating by past passengers (out of five stars) and photos of him and his car. He will probably greet you with a friendly fist-bump. Afterwards you rate him and pay through the app. He rates you, too, so if you are poor company you may not get another Lyft." ...

***

En verdad algo así no podría haber sucedido hace 30 años; no sólo porque aún no teníamos los c-phones, sino también porque vivíamos en una época en la que la "propiedad" o era desestimada por unos (hippies), o exageradamente estimada (hasta venerada) por otros: y tenida por símbolo de poder... En la carretera la cosa era (ligeramente) diferente... Lo interesante, y novedoso, de esta historia con la que comienza el Special Report, es la combinación (eventualmente m a s i v a) de 1)optimización económica, y 2)construcción de relacionamiento humano. Algo está pasando :-)

El DNA de los Innovadores (8): "Diversity of experience"

Aquí su página en Amazon

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeff Dyer (Author)
Hal Gregersen (Author)
Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

***

Nunca se sabe cómo se van a "juntar los puntos" :-)

De esto puedo dar testimonio por experiencia propia. Y lo más sorprendente: la cantidad de veces, que una cantidad de gente, no alcanza jamás a dar el paso que permite "juntar los puntos", no obstante estar estos ahí: al frente de los ojos, a unos centímetros de la punta de la nariz.

El DNA de los Innovadores (7): "Tap Outside Experts"

Aquí su página en Amazon

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeff Dyer (Author)
Hal Gregersen (Author)
Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

***

La especialización del conocimiento (al lograrlo, al utilizarlo, etc.) es la gran ganancia, y pérdida al mismo tiempo, de la época moderna (1.500 DC en adelante). Quizá lo que los innovadores han descubierto vía el desarrollo de esta skill no es otra cosa que el inicio de un remedio a esta lamentable situación: que la ganancia TENGA QUE SER pérdida al mismo tiempo.

Blueseed: facilitando la innovación (una curiosidad... pero así están las cosas :-)

Ver aquí su sitio Web

"Blueseed is a project to station a ship 12 nautical miles from the coast of San Francisco, in international waters. The location will allow startup entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world to start or grow their company near Silicon Valley, without the need for a US work visa. The ship will be converted into a coworking and co-living space, and will have high-speed Internet access and daily transportation to the mainland via ferry boat. So far, over 1000 entrepreneurs from 60+ countries expressed interest in living on the ship. The project is backed by PayPal founder and Facebook early investor Peter Thiel. "

"Why Blueseed?

Because Google and Yahoo! and Intel and other famous companies that were co-founded by immigrant entrepreneurs, have created tens of thousands of jobs, and have built products and services that we all use every day. But who knows how many other companies we don’t have, because their immigrant co-founders were not allowed to remain in Silicon Valley?"

***

"Why not simply telecommute?

Shane Mac, Director of Product at successful startup Zaarly, gives seven reasons why early-stage companies should start up in the same physical office space.

Many businesses can be run successfully from anywhere in the world, using collaboration software and teleconferencing. Other businesses are much more likely to succeed in an environment where people interact in person, and startups are a great example of that. Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Groupon, Zynga – they didn’t start online; they started thanks to the serendipity of a place that allowed the founders to meet and work together with the talent they needed, face-to-face.

Risks of working remotely include employees missing interaction with colleagues, becoming physically drained by travel, growing unhappy, or being recruited by other companies. Peter Norvig, director of research for Google, said in a Forbes interview:

It’s 11 hours to Hyderabad. We do video conferences where we’re up late and they’re up early. Maybe a video conference is as good as a formal meeting, but there are no informal meetings. As a result, we lose the pace of work, and we lose trust.

Best-selling author Ori Brafman has a short video on how proximity plays a major role in helping individuals form instant connections with others. While telepresence using robots such as Vgo or Anybots is somewhat successful, iRobot CEO Colin Angle said, “The products that have launched so far are really videoconferencing on a remote, driveable platform. It has some appeal, but they don’t build a version of you in a remote location able to be as effective as you would in person.”

In November 2011, ABC News reported on the story of Amit Aharoni, an Israeli startup entrepreneur who, after creating 9 American jobs, received a letter from the US Citizenship and Immigration Serice (USCIS) denying his visa request and notifying him to leave the country immediately. Aharoni left for Vancouver and tried to run his company (an online cruise booking service) remotely via Skype. That didn’t quite work out, so he set to work on making his story public. After ABC World News picked up the story, USCIS reversed their decision within 24 hours. The moral is that running a startup remotely can be big enough of a pain to warrant mounting a media campaign, and that unless they manage to attract massive media attention, a startup entrepreneur without a valid visa may have to relocate their operations outside of the U.S."

El DNA de los Innovadores (6): "Look for people on the extremes"

Aquí su página en Amazon

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeff Dyer (Author)
Hal Gregersen (Author)
Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

***

Más ejemplos :-)

¿Quién y por qué se lee dos libros a la semana?

¿Quién y por qué va tres veces a la tienda en el día?

¿Quién y por qué necesita cinco baterías (y tres cargadores) para su "cel"?

El DNA de los Innovadores (5)

Aquí su página en Amazon

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeff Dyer (Author)
Hal Gregersen (Author)
Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

***

1. "Faster, cheaper, better" ha sido desde siempre el "mantra" del desarrollo de productos.

2. Clayton Christensen precisó qué era eso de "better", descubriendo que los compradores lo que hacen es contratar los productos para que estos hagan por ellos los "jobs" que no desean (o no pueden) ellos mismos hacer.

3. Así, la cantidad de Jobs-To-Be-Done bien resueltos que provee un producto, determina en últimas su VALOR para el comprador.

"Chilecon Valley"

Aquí el reportaje desde The Economist

Extracto introductorio:

"ONE by one they came to the stage and pitched their ideas to the crowd. There was the founder of Kwelia.com, which makes software that helps landlords mint more money from their properties. There was the co-founder of Chef Surfing, an online service for people looking to hire chefs, and for culinary wizards keen to tout their skills. And the creator of Kedzoh, which has an app that lets firms send short training videos to workers via their mobile phones or tablet computers.

These and other start-ups, some sporting fashionably weird names such as Chu Shu, Wallwisher and IguanaBee, won rapturous applause from the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the audience. To your correspondent, who is based in Silicon Valley, it all felt very familiar. Yet this scene took place in Chile, a nation better known for copper-mining and cheap wine than for innovation."

***

Otra cara de la globalización sin duda.
Una muy amable por cierto.
Y que señala el camino de las nuevas migraciones: ya no por el hambre (la carencia física de alimentos), sino por el hambre de un espacio propicio para la creación :-)

Halloween (another) big business (muy innovador por cierto)

Aquí el reportaje original: Consumers can't keep paws off pet Halloween costumes, expected to spend $370 million

By Stacy Jones/The Star-Ledger
on October 23, 2012 at 6:00 AM, updated October 23, 2012 at 6:08 AM

Extracto inicial:

"The amount of money shoppers spend on Halloween costumes for pets has been a treat for retailers and it keeps getting sweeter.

Consumers will spend an estimated $370 million dressing their dogs and cats for ghoulish festivities this year, according to the National Retail Federation."

Extracto anécdota:

"Kathy Garland of Morris Township said she’s been buying costumes for Harry, her three-year-old English cocker spaniel, since he was just three months old.

“The first year he was Harry Potter the boy wizard. For that he had a hat, cape and the glasses, which didn’t really stay on too well,” she said. “Last year he was a New York City firefighter and for that he had a costume with a cape, hat and a fake axe.”

This year Garland spent $40 ordering a dog-sized New England Patriots sweater online and picking up a miniature football to attach to his collar.

“My husband’s a fan,” she said."

***

Sin comentarios :-/ (por ahora). Paso a la imágenes :-)

¿Mega-Innovación a la vista?: el "auto-automóvil", esto es, sin conductor

El artículo es de The Economist

Extracto introductorio:

"THE arrival of the mass-produced car, just over a century ago, caused an explosion of business creation. First came the makers of cars and all the parts that go into them. Then came the garages, filling stations and showrooms. Then all sorts of other car-dependent businesses: car parks, motels, out-of-town shopping centres. Commuting by car allowed suburbs to spread, making fortunes for prescient housebuilders and landowners. Roadbuilding became a far bigger business, whereas blacksmiths, farriers and buggy-whip makers faded away as America’s horse and mule population fell from 26m in 1915 to 3m in 1960."

Extracto interesante 1:

"Just imagine. It could, for a start, save the motor industry from stagnation. Carmakers are fretting at signs that smartphone-obsessed teenagers these days do not rush to get a driving licence and buy their first car, as their parents did. Their fear is that the long love affair with the car is fading. But once they are spared the trouble and expense of taking lessons and passing a test, young adults might rediscover the joys of the open road. Another worry for the motor industry is that car use seems to be peaking in the most congested cities. Yet automated cars would drive nose-to-tail, increasing the capacity of existing roads; and since they would be able to drop off their passengers and drive away, the lack of parking spaces in town might not matter so much."

Extracto interesante 2:

"All these trends will affect the car business. But when mass-produced cars appeared, they had an impact on the whole of society. What might be the equivalent social implications of driverless cars? And who might go the same way as the buggy-whip makers? Electronics and software firms will be among the winners: besides providing all the sensors and computing power that self-driving cars will need, they will enjoy strong demand for in-car entertainment systems, since cars’ occupants will no longer need to keep their eyes on the road. Bus companies might run convoys of self-piloting coaches down the motorways, providing competition for intercity railways. Travelling salesmen might prefer to journey from city to city overnight in driverless Winnebagos packed with creature comforts. So, indeed, might some tourists. If so, they will need fewer hotel rooms."


Extracto interesante 3:

"When people are no longer in control of their cars they will not need driver insurance—so goodbye to motor insurers and brokers. Traffic accidents now cause about 2m hospital visits a year in America alone, so autonomous vehicles will mean much less work for emergency rooms and orthopaedic wards. Roads will need fewer signs, signals, guard rails and other features designed for the human driver; their makers will lose business too. When commuters can work, rest or play while the car steers itself, longer commutes will become more bearable, the suburbs will spread even farther and house prices in the sticks will rise. When self-driving cars can ferry children to and from school, more mothers may be freed to re-enter the workforce. The popularity of the country pub, which has been undermined by strict drink-driving laws, may be revived. And so on."

***

La prueba de fuego (obvia) es el viaje en avión NO piloteado: si un ser humano puede con esto, puede entonces con el auto-automóvil :-) ¿De acuerdo?

PS: en la divertida película El Quinto Elemento, ésta no fue ciertamente la prospectiva escogida :-)

Innovacioncita (bueno, no tan pequeña :-)

Estoy mamado de las encuestas que pretenden medir mi satisfacción con el servicio recibido: en restaurantes por ejemplo (pero la "mamada" aplica a muchos otros escenarios de negocio-o no negocio-servicio)

No me gusta (entre otras):

1. Que siempre preguntan lo mismo.
2. Que nunca sé qué diantres pasó al cabo.
3. Que ocupan mi tiempo y atención, y no veo claro qué recibo a cambio.

Consecuencia: cada vez las respondo menos y con menos ganas :-/

Lo cual no es buena cosa para los escenarios de negocio-o no negocio-servicio :-)

***

Sugiero (quisiera verlo por ahí)

1. Que la "encuesta" fuera una "app" en "la tablet" o en "el phone"; que llegado al sitio-escenario se activara (mejor, que pidiera permiso de hacerlo) automáticamente, invitándome a "participar".

2. Que por supuesto la "app" tuviera memoria de todas mis visitas y calificaciones anteriores, y "actuara" en consecuencia.

3. Que "participar" fuera algo que sucediera, ¡jugando!. Por ejemplo un juego que me permita "jugar" con el mesero un juego (valen todas las redundancias :-) cuyo resultado sería que sube o baja la propina que se va a ganar; cool! (esta relación inmediata entre nivel de satisfacción, recompensa y actuación del vendedor es clave para todos los "juegos"). Por ejemplo un juego que me permita "jugar" con los demás comensales un juego (valen todas las redundancias :-) cuyo resultado fuera un agregado de buen o mal ambiente right now en el restaurante que despertara right now de su siesta al administrador local y/o al dueño de la franquicia 6.000 kilómetros más al norte (del planeta),

y

s
u
c
e
d
i
e
r
a
n

cosas :-)

En fin, esa es la idea.

El DNA de los Innovadores (4)

Aquí su página en Amazon

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeff Dyer (Author)
Hal Gregersen (Author)
Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

***

En estos días observé (y lo había observado antes muchas veces, sin "caer en cuenta") una pareja que lidiaba con exprimir un "octavo" de limón sobre la empanada en ciernes de ser degustada.

El proceso suele ser bastante molesto:

1.- El "octavo" de limón resbala entre los dedos
2.- Salpica, a los ojos, o a la ropa
3.- Las manos quedan untadas y oliendo por un rato
4.- Y lo peor, pocas gotas finalmente "caen" dentro de la empanada :-)

Quienes venden estas (deliciosas) empanaditas colombianas, de cara a una mayor satisfacción y consumo del producto, tendrían que proveer a sus comensales, por ejemplo, de un exprimidor desechable: una versión de bajo costo del diseño clásico o un diseño mejorado del mismo (ver abajo). Puede no ser desechable, pero esta solución implicaría el proceso-logístico de recogida de la mesa y lavado. En fin, identificado el Job To Be Done, la tarea es ahora de ingenieros y diseñadores :-)

Google "FibreDroid"?

Aquí el texto completo desde TelecomTV, by I. D. Scales.

Extracto clave 1:

"Is Google aiming to launch a FibreDroid?

Just what is Google doing building out a fibre network across the Kansas Cities? If companies were people then Google is an adolescent software wizard not a gnarly old telco guy. It just doesn't fit - unless there's a cunning plan? By I. D. Scales.

Perhaps Google is bored with the ephemerality of the search business and yearns instead to undertake some manly trench digging and fibre-stringing and that's why it went to Kansas City to build its own network? Perhaps.

But the consensus view within the industry is that the search giant is looking to cock a snook at the incumbent network operators who tend to claim that regulation - including net neutrality - makes it uneconomic for then to invest in fibre access.

The incumbent telcos tend to argue that they must be free of regulation to give them enough commercial control over the access network to derive a reasonable return. This is hotly contested by Google and others who claim abundant bandwidth and an open Internet will drive huge value for users and they'll be prepared to pay a reasonable amount to get it.

So Google has set out with its Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City Missouri (they are twin cities) builds to show that a viable, fibre-based broadband access network offering gigabit plus connections can be built and deployed profitably - if you do it right and attach the 'correct' business model (see NEWS TIMELINE below).

And of course Google can afford to splash the cash in the interests of advancing its world view. It's a sort of "put your money where your mouth is" exercise."


Extracto clave 2:

"Is there more to it than this? Well, I think Google does have an obvious option in reserve should the build prove to be a stonking success (so far it looks promising but there's a way to go). And for want of a better term I'm calling it FiberDroid.

I think Google may well be looking to do an 'Android' and license its fibre network concept and the services it has attached to it to enable other companies to deploy similar networks and services (including Google services as a default) in other cities both in the US and globally.

Think of Android as the open mobile 'platform' and FibreDroid as its fixed network 'platform' equivalent. Of course Google doesn't want to do hundreds of network builds itself (just as it didn't want to build its own handsets) but it doesn't have to."

***

¡Guau! :-)

Coincido al 100% con las dos especulaciones de este inteligente (sin duda, y lo digo en serio) columnista de TelecomTV

Y añado,

1. Google (sus fundadores, su administración, el talento que ha atraído) ha probado una y otra vez durante más de una década ser capaz de situarse, y desde ahí proyectarse, en la punta-punta del esfuerzo innovador de su "industria".

2. A su comprensión de la "industria" (y consecuente posterior actuación) se le debe "sumar" (puesto que a Google le suma) la lentitud (por decirlo de alguna manera) de pensamiento y acción, que los tele-incumbentes han mostrado también durante más de una década, para adaptarse a los cambios que la tecnología ha propiciado.

3. Tal vez (tal vez) Google sea una de esas compañías de nuevo cuño, que no resienten lo que JA Schumpeter llamaba la destrucción-creativa, que así mismo ES creación-destructiva, como acertadamente lo señala su biografo (ver entradas anteriores en este mismo blog), y por el contrario se hacen a sí mismas más fuertes adoptando esta
magna
regla
del
juego
capitalista.

May be. Ojalá (que significa Dios quiera :-)

Innovation and Big Data

Según parece, todo comenzó aquí:

Deep Blue

"On May 11, 1997, an IBM computer called IBM ® Deep Blue ® beat the world chess champion after a six-game match: two wins for IBM, one for the champion and three draws. The match lasted several days and received massive media coverage around the world. It was the classic plot line of man vs. machine. Behind the contest, however, was important computer science, pushing forward the ability of computers to handle the kinds of complex calculations needed to help discover new medical drugs; do the broad financial modeling needed to identify trends and do risk analysis; handle large database searches; and perform massive calculations needed in many fields of science."

En otras palabras: BIG DATA

***

Por cuenta de las facilidades varias de registro, almacenamiento y procesamiento de interacciones, provistas por el avance en las TICs, muchas empresas (comercio al por menor, telecomunicaciones, servicios financieros, otras) están hoy en la misma posición que IBM y su Deep Blue por allá en 1997: listas para vencer al campeón más experto que haya, a punta de DATA (BIG) y cálculo.

Sólo que esta vez sí es Rocket Science :-)

No basta la DATA
No basta el "software"
No basta el poder de cálculo
A todo esto hay que ponerle al frente: e x t r e m a capacidad para elaborar preguntas :-)

Por todo esto, "BIG DATA" es un Servicio Profesional de alto calibre :-) Y la innovación se puede beneficiar en
e x t r e m o
del resultado...
...del resultado de responder vía BIG DATA a las preguntas e x t r e m a s :-)

***

Ver aquí a modo de introducción: Super Crunchers, de Ian Ayres

Entrepreneurship: desde el Ludwig von Mises Institute

Aquí, por John Dellape

Extracto 1:

"I am hard-pressed to think of a more fitting time for the book Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment: A New Approach to the Firm by Nicolai Foss and Peter Klein to be read. The book's aim is to integrate the study of entrepreneurship with the theory of the firm under economic analysis. Nationally and globally we are at a pivotal moment in which people need to understand how businesses function arnd the entrepreneurial abilities necessary for continued economic progress. Without further ado, I give you chapter 1 of the book."

Extracto 2:

"Chapter 1. The Need for an Entrepreneurial Theory of the Firm

Foss and Klein (FK) lament from the start the schism that has been erected in economic science between the firm and the entrepreneur. They argue that, for a full understanding of the firm, one must understand the entrepreneurs who make decisions within the firm; while for a full understanding of the entrepreneur, one must understand the environment of the firm in which he acts. Their effort is to make the needed connection where a substantial gap currently exists between the firm and the entrepreneur.
The Theory of the Firm in Economics

FK give evidence to show that "the economic and managerial analysis of the firm is a vibrant area of research and application." At the same time, "the theory of the firm as a contractual or organizational entity … is … a relatively new development" that emerged in the 1970s. The authors argue that it was Ronald Coase who first propelled the theory of the firm.
Entrepreneurship

FK also note that there has been a considerable push in the study of entrepreneurship within the past decade as economists have seen the entrepreneur more worthy of inspection in order to understand technological progress. FK pose the question "What is entrepreneurship?" Typically economists have either defined entrepreneurship in terms of either (1) an outcome or a phenomenon (self-employment, startups) or (2) a way of thinking or acting (creativity, innovation, alertness, etc.)."

Extracto CLAVE:

" [cita desde el propio libro comentado] The firm … is the entrepreneur and the assets he owns, and therefore ultimately controls. The theory of the firm is essentially a theory of how the entrepreneur exercises his judgmental decision-making — what combinations of assets will he seek to acquire, what (proximate) decisions will he delegate to subordinates, how will he provide incentives and employ monitoring to see that his assets are used consistently with his judgments, and so on."

El DNA de los Innovadores (3)

Aquí su página en Amazon

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeff Dyer (Author)
Hal Gregersen (Author)
Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

***

"La necesidad (la carencia-NO HAY, la urgencia-NO HAY TIEMPO) es la madre de todas las invenciones"

Las "restricciones" son una puya a la creatividad; en la holgura y la comodidad es más fácil la relajación que nos duerme; ensaye (por ejemplo) a vivir un día de su vida con una sola mano disponible, y apreciará cuántas "estrategias" se le ocurren para compensar :-)

El DNA de los Innovadores (2)

Aquí su página en Amazon

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeff Dyer (Author)
Hal Gregersen (Author)
Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

"Mejor colorado una vez y no pálido para toda la vida..." :-)

***

Una de las características que hace poderosos a los grandes innovadores, afirman los autores-investigadores, es su permanente actitud cuestionante: hacer preguntas una y otra vez, todo el tiempo, en relación a todo. Aquí se ilustra porqué NO todos se comportan "naturalmente" así; y qué cabe hacer al respecto.


Recuerdo que Kenichi Ohmae, en "La Mente del Estratega", relataba cómo los ejecutivos más brillantes (exitosos) de las organizaciones en Japón allá por las décadas 70s y 80s se caracterizaban por lo mismo: preguntar ¿Por qué? y ¿Por qué (otra vez), y otra vez, y así hasta el cansancio, a objeto de llegar "a la raíz" del problema (u oportunidad :-)

El DNA de los innovadores (1)

Aquí su página en Amazon

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeff Dyer (Author)
Hal Gregersen (Author)
Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

***
En esta página:

1. Referencia a los principales libros recientes que valen la pena sobre el tema; incluidos los dos con lo que Clayton Christensen comenzó su revolución sobre la innovación en las organizaciones: El Dilema de los Innovadores, La Solución de los Innovadores.

2. Advertencia: se tratará en el libro sobre CREATIVIDAD, pero únicamente desde la perspectiva de interés para los negocios.

3. Anuncio: todo lo que usted encontrará en el libro proviene de una investigación formal, que presupone que en las personalidades innovadoras que han probado ser tales en el mundo de los negocios, se puede rastrear la clave del "gen" de la innovación.

Un homenaje a los ingenieros (que además de calcular, soñaron :-)

Aquí galería completa :-)

Aquí referencia bibliográfica

S69-34882
The Apollo 11 crew relaxes during training
May 24, 1969

AS11-44-6550
Earthrise viewed from lunar orbit prior to landing

AS11-37-5454
view from LM window just after landing
July 20, 1969

AS11-40-5927
Aldrin unpacks experiments from LM

AS11-37-5528
Armstrong in LM after historic moonwalk

AS11-44-6642
LM approaches CSM for docking / earthrise in b.g.
July 21, 1969

S69-40023
Mission Control celebrates after splashdown
July 24, 1969

S69-40147
Apollo 11 astronauts, still in their quarantine van, are greeted by their wives upon arrival at Ellington Air Force Base
July 27, 1969

***

Sin palabras (de la emoción :-) y en señal de respeto a la grandeza alcanzada :-)

Google Project Glass

Aquí desde el blog oficial de Google para el tema

Aquí (comentarios) desde el blog de Nicholas Carr

Aquí el visual-demo:



***

¿Qué podemos decir?

1. Que lo vimos antes en películas (Terminator creo que fue la primera)

2. Que es un paso más en la "fusión" de los "mundos" (el de siempre y el ciber-nuevo)

3. Que será muy difícil al cabo, oponerse a tales fusiones (¿Quién no usa hoy un cel?)

4. Que la puerta queda, sin duda, abierta a las "aplicaciones" (las que muestra el video demo son calificables como mínimo de ingenuas... para lo que veremos)

5. Que Google acaba de entrar (abril 2012) por la puerta grande al mundo de los "terminales" :-)

Innovacioncita...

...originada en personalidad obsesiva (la mía)

Quisiera que en todo lugar donde se maneje efectivo, y se atiendan clientes, haya una "maquinita" que le enderezca las puntas a los billetes, esto es, que los deje tras realizar su trabajo (la "maquinita"), como recién salidos de la otra maquinita que los fabrica.

No me importa tanto que parezcan como nuevos, es imposible que así sea, lo que me importa es que no estén doblados, en su cuerpo, y en especial que no estén doblados en sus (pu... :-) puntas.

Así se consigue que entren dócilmente en la billetera, y además ésta no termina siendo un amasijo de "papeles", gorda e inmanejable :-)

***

PS1 (lo dije: personalidad obsesiva la que da pie a esta humilde solicitud)

PS2 (Ni siquiera tendría que decirlo, el trabajo hoy de enderezar las (pu... :-) puntas, lo tengo que hacer yo con mis manos, mis uñas, y conlleva toda la molestia que se pueden imaginar :-/)

Just a question ( a sort of :-) ...

... Why stop dreaming when you wake up!

Innovando la innovación: Big Idea Group (BIG)

Aquí su sitio web

"BIG is an open source innovation company.
We complement traditional, internal approaches with an effective and efficient open innovation process. Our particular expertise is in insight discovery, innovation generation, and innovation execution.

We have worked with clients on a variety of projects in consumer products and services, and at different stages of the innovation process. Whether a company wants to hire us from insight discovery to on-shelf product, or for just one segment of development, BIG's open innovation resources and processes will powerfully augment internal efforts.

BIG was launched in 2000. It is partially owned by WPP, one of the world's largest communications service groups."

***

¿Por qué sí podría ser útil para usted (en particular), y (al mismo tiempo) no necesariamente para todos?

1. (Porque es parcialmente owned by WPP, nada menos :-)
2. Porque el camino de la "innovación abierta" ha probado sus bondades en múltiples industrias y escenarios de retos de innovación
3. Porque (en verdad) no se arriesga mucho probando :-)

El ambiente para la innovación en Colombia y en Chile

El doc completo aquí

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 24 - final)

p.404 [desde su diario]

“10/9/42: Mankind is prepared to believe anything except the truth.”

“5/29/43: Humanity does not care for freedom. The mass of the people realize that they are not up to it: what they want is being fed, led, amused, and above everything, drilled. But they do care for the phrase [freedom].”

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 23)

p.358

“The case for capitalism, says Schumpeter, “must rest on long-run considerations.” In the short run, it is impossible for people generally, and even intellectuals, to ignore what seem to be un reasonable “profits and inefficiencies.” They therefore have difficulty in seeing long-range trends in which capitalism is benefiting society as a whole. Uniquely among economic systems, therefore, capitalism “creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.” With its bountiful production, it underwrites the education of a class of hostile intellectuals who have no “direct responsibility for practical affairs” and little experience in managing anything.

In the larger sense, the emotional feelings of human beings are so complicated that there can be no assurance that people in general are “happier” or “better of” under industrial capitalism than they had been in medieval manors or villages. Economic efficiency is only one of many human goals, and not necessarily the most important to every individual. Thus the future of capitalism cannot be assured on the basis of its superior economic performance alone.”

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 22)

p.356

“In pre-capitalist times, he writes, no economic achievement, by itself, could advance anyone into the living standards of the ruling class. But when capitalism began to spread, persons of “supernormal ability and ambition” could now reach a much higher standard of living, provided they would pursue business careers. Yet business success did not confer the charisma that had attached to feudal lords and others leaders of earlier times: “no flourishing of swords about it, not much physical prowess, no chance to gallop the armored horse into the enemy.”

As time passed, however, the economic juggernaut of capitalism began to subvert most of the underpinnings of feudal society –knightly service, the craft guild, the village, the manor. In place of the old webs of reciprocal personal responsibilities –lord and knight, landowner and peasant, patron and artisan- capitalism substituted impersonal efficiency and opportunity. People were no longer part of an organic social system. They could achieve material gains, but they also became “free to make a mess of their lives.” They now had sufficient “individualist rope” to hang themselves.”

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 21)

p.356

“It seemed plain to Schumpeter that continuous technical innovation and organizational remodeling, not monopolistic profits, accounted for the prosperity of most great companies. “These units,” he says in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, “not only arise in the process of creative destruction and function in a way entirely different from the static schema” but often actually make their own markets: “They largely create what they exploit.” Monopoly profits might flow for a while, but only briefly, in the form of big but single-pay-off “prizes offered by capitalist society to the successful innovator.” Pushing his analysis to its limits, Schumpeter identifies capitalist entrepreneurship with technological progress itself. As a matter of historical record, they were “essentially one and the same thing,” the first being “the “propelling force” of the second.

Schumpeter ends this part of his discussion of capitalism with a remarkable statement that foreshadows the ironic style he uses later in the book:

[Schumpeter:] I am not going to sum up as the reader presumably expects me to. That is to say, I am not going to invite him, before he decides to put his trust in an untried alternative advocated by untried men, to look once more at the impressive economic and the still more impressive cultural achievement of the capitalist order and at the immense promise held out by both. I am not going to argue that that achievement and that promise are in themselves sufficient to support an argument for allowing the capitalist process to work on and, as it might easily be put, to lift poverty from the shoulders of mankind… I am not going to argue, that on the strength of that performance, that the capitalist intermezzo is going to be prolonged. In fact, I am now going to draw the exactly opposite inference.

He next lays the foundations for his much-quoted argument that capitalism has developed the seeds of its own destruction –not for economic reasons but for social ones. To show how this happened, he forthrightly traces the evolution of capitalism from its origins down to the present.”

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 20)

p.355

“The reader of these passages should make no mistake about the radical nature of what Schumpeter is asserting. He is indicting his own economics profession for what amounts to a capital crime: failing to acknowledge that continuous innovation is “endogenous to” (inherent in) capitalism. If this one conceptual alteration were adopted in orthodox economics, then a whole series of methodological shifts would ensue. To the extent that economists become more focused on change, they would pay more attention to the record of change. They would have to pursue a much more thorough investigation of economic and business history, as Schumpeter himself had done in Business Cycles. And against that historical background, they would recognize that large-scale units of control were not merely to be tolerated as necessary evils. Instead, they would see big business as part and parcel of “the most powerful engine of [economic] progress and in particular of the long-run expansion of total output” that the world had ever witnessed.

Schumpeter then returns to the question of monopoly, mounting an attack on many American’s mistaken idea that monopoly and big business are the same thing. The word monopoly itself, he says, is a label “sure to rouse the public’s hostility” because of its association with privileges bestowed by British kings during America’s colonial period. Then, too, the evils of monopoly had been invoked by scores of American statesmen, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and now by Franklin D. Roosevelt. But under modern capitalism, long-run cases of monopoly are almost nonexistent –even rarer than instances of perfect competition. Hence, high entrepreneurial profits are always temporary. And on balance, big business is unquestionably a positive force for innovation and growth.

It was perverse, Schumpeter believed, that so many people in the United States had confused monopoly with big business and made the latter into a whipping boy. The country was, after all, the seedbed of giant firms. Because of its huge internal market and its entrepreneurial culture, it was the home of about a half of the world’s largest companies. Schumpeter felt very strongly about this issue, even more so than he reveals in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. And he believed that he had found a psychological reason for it. As he wrote in his diary: “American opinion is so anti big business precisely because big business has made the country what it now is and in doing so it has set the secret standard of the American soul: who is no part of big bus., feels he does not meet the standard and by compensation turns against it.”

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 19)

p.354

“In real life, anything approaching perfect competition is extremely rare.

Instead, much of modern business in advanced industrial countries has evolved into a form of organization known as “oligopoly.” This word was introduced by Sir Thomas More in Utopia (1516), then revived 410 years later by Schumpeter’s Harvard colleague E.H. Chamberlin. It now refers to industries in which a small number of large and powerful firms compete with one another in the same line of business: oil, steel, automobiles, chemicals, and a few others. Most of these companies are engaged in mass production, mass distribution, or both; and they often require very large capital investments. In oligopolies, Schumpeter writes, “there is in fact no determinate equilibrium at all and the possibility presents itself that there may be and endless sequence of moves and countermoves, an indefinite state of warfare between firms.” Hence the analogy with military strategy. But these new situations –like others aspects of Schumpeter’s theories, such as the pivotal importance of entrepreneurship- do not easily lend themselves to equilibrium analysis and to mathematical modeling.

One result of the alternative approach Schumpeter proposes would be a sharper focus on product quality and marketing as elements of competition. This new perspective would reduce what had been an overwhelming emphasis on the analysis of price. “In capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not [that kind of] competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization.” This kind of competition “strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.” It is effective even “when it is merely an ever-present threat. It disciplines before it attacks.” A theoretical analysis that “neglects this essential element of the case neglects all that is most typically capitalist about it; even if correct in logic as well as in fact, it is like Hamlet without the Danish prince.”

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 18)

p.353

“In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Schumpeter next mounts a spirited assault on the idea of “perfect competition,” a key theoretical tool used by academic economists in his own time and in ours as well. Models of perfect competition cannot take business strategy into consideration because they assume that every industry contains innumerable firms, each of which is by definition too weak to affect the economic landscape through strategic behavior. Perfect competition assumes unlimited numbers of both buyers and sellers, all of whom possess complete information about all product and services being bought and sold. Such models contemplate frictionless transactions, with no need for lawyers, accountants, brokers, partnerships, corporations, contracts, or other essential accoutrements of actual business.

Perfect competition lends itself very well to mathematical modeling, however, and that advantage has been almost irresistible to economists. But because it neglects the dynamics of creative destruction, Schumpeter finds perfect competition wholly unsuitable for understanding a modern capitalist economy. When, for example, a new product or process is introduced, all buyers and sellers cannot possible have complete information about potential markets. “As a matter of fact,” Schumpeter writes, “perfect competition is and always has been temporarily suspended whenever anything new is being introduced.” And the continual emergence of new products and new ways of doing things is “the fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion.”

Despite its irrelevance to perfect competition, he continues, big-business capitalism has proved its superiority, in the long run, at expanding total output and raising living standards: “The actual efficiency of the capitalist engine of production in the era of the largest-scale units has been much greater that in the preceding era of small or medium-sized ones. This is a matter of statistical record… the technological and organizational possibilities [of firms in the perfect competition model] could never have produced similar results. How modern capitalism would work under perfect competition is hence a meaningless question.”

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 17)

p.352

“Since creative destruction is an evolutionary process, the performance of capitalism must be judged “over time, as it unfolds through decades or centuries.” Here, Schumpeter criticizes the approach of his fellow economists to the study of big business. It is useless, he says, to analyze a large company’s behavior at a single point in time –that is, to “accept the data of the momentary situation as if there were no past or future to it.” Yet this is the customary method. The typical economic theorist or government commission does not see the behavior of a major firm, “on the one hand, as a result of a piece of past history, and, on the other hand as an attempt to deal with a situation that is sure to change presently- as an attempt by those firms to keep on their feet, on ground that is slipping away from under them. In other words, the problem that is usually being visualized is how capitalism administers existing structures, whereas the relevant problem is how it creates and destroys them.”

Creative destruction constantly sweeps out old products, old enterprises, and old organizational forms, replacing them with new ones. “Every piece of business strategy acquires its true significance only against the background of that process and within the situation created by it.” Strategy, he goes on to say, “must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction; it cannot be understood irrespective of it or, in fact, on the hypothesis that there is a perennial lull.” Any investigator who does not recognize these essential characteristics, Schumpeter concludes, “does a meaningless job.”

In using the term “business strategy” and likening corporate initiatives to military behavior, Schumpeter helped to set off a revolution in the analysis of business that is still thriving today. “Business strategy” and “corporate strategy” have gained extremely wide currency not only in the business press but in popular media as well. Numerous consulting firms specialize in strategy, and all business schools teach courses in it. Most of these schools have an entire department with the word “strategy” or “strategic” in its name. Hundreds of business books and thousands of articles published over the last six decades include “strategy” in their titles. It has been one of the most significant new ideas in business thinking since the 1940S. [Nota al pie:] “Schumpeter did not coin the term “business strategy,” but his use of it here was quite important in popularizing the idea. […] It is almost certain that in discussing business strategy along with entrepreneurs, Schumpeter was using a military analogy. As he wrote in 1946, “In my youth, I did, for instance, under a man who was considered an authority, some work in the history of strategy and tactics. The one thing that still stands out in my memory is that there is no unitary type of ‘military man’ or ‘great general’ and that the attempt to construct such a type only falsifies our picture of military history.”””

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 16)

p.350

“Turning from the simplicity and purported certainty of Marx’s economic utopia, Schumpeter poses his own deceptively guileless question and answer: “Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think that it can.”

The argument that follows this memorable beginning to the second part of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is complex, closely reasoned, and filled with historical detail. The assertion itself is very carefully hedged, in numerous passages. Schumpeter’s real purpose is not to prophesy capitalism’s downfall but to explain how it works. He is at pains to demonstrate why capitalism has been a very good thing –and then to underscore its fragility.

[…]

He begins his argument by demonstrating that modern industrial capitalism has produced the greatest per capita output of goods ever recorded. And, in direct contravention of the Marxian forecast that worker’s share of income will steadily fall, Schumpeter repeats that “relative shares have substantially changed in favor of the lower income groups.” Regardless of subjective assessments by popular writers and literary intellectuals, statistics show that the average worker, under “an avalanche of consumer’s goods,” has a better material existence that ever before. In other words, “the capitalist process, not by coincidence but by virtue of its mechanism, progressively raises the standard of life of the masses.”

[…]

And one major way in which Schumpeter upended Marx was in his treatment of the controversial question of monopoly. Writing in the 1930S and early 1940S –a time of mounting public anger over industrial concentration –Schumpeter emphasized that enormous improvements in the lives of common people had “evolved during the period of relatively unfettered ‘big business.’” Far from diminishing the benefits consumers derived from the workings of the capitalist engine, business of gran size had increased them.

In explaining how this happened, Schumpeter introduces his famous term “creative destruction”: “The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation –if I may use that biological term- that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in.””

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 15)

p.270

““Capitalist evolution spells disturbance,” Schumpeter emphasizes again and again. “Capitalism is essentially a process of (endogenous) [sic] economic change.” In the absence of change, “capitalist society cannot exist.” If the capitalist engine stalls, the economic system will disintegrate. And the key that starts the engine and keeps it running is innovation: “Without innovations, no entrepreneurs; without entrepreneurial achievement, no capitalist returns and no capitalist propulsion. The atmosphere of industrial revolutions -of ‘progress'- is the only one in which capitalism can survive.” Hence there must be constant change, generated from within. “In this sense,” Schumpeter concludes, “stabilized capitalism is a contradiction in terms.””

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 14)

p.259

“In describing the industrial revolution –and in probing the nature of change, which is the heart of his thesis- Schumpeter draws sharp distinctions between inventors and entrepreneurs, and between inventions and innovations: “The making of the invention and the carrying out of the corresponding innovation are, economically and sociologically, two entirely different things.” Often the two interact, but they are never the same, and innovations are usually more important than inventions.

The career of Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) exemplifies these distinctions especially well. Arkwright was an inventor, but –much more critically- an innovating entrepreneur. Before he developed his machines, which spun cotton faster and produced stronger thread, weavers had problems in blending cotton thread with linen fibers, which come from flax. But Arkwright’s innovations, including his own emergent factory system, soon began to revolutionize the industry. Other industrialists paid him handsome fees for the use of his patented machines, and he operated several factories himself. Before long, he became very rich and received a knighthood. In Schumpeter’s terms, Arkwright was a New Man organizing a New Firm and reaping a high entrepreneurial Profit.

Arkwright’s multiple innovations and skills in organizing the whole system far surpassed the significance of his inventions alone. “Doing the thing,” as Schumpeter puts it –“the actual setting up of new production functions- is a distinct phenomenon.” The falling domino of one innovation topples the next domino, in an endless series radiating in all directions. “We readily see how every step conditions other steps –yarn and cloth, for instance, alternating in offering new demand to each other and in running up against bottlenecks, the removal of which then makes the next achievement.”

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it does not automatically produce innovation. New men operating new firms –such as Richard Arkwright in textiles, Josiah Wedgwood in pottery, James Watt and Matthew Boulton in steam engines, and many others –had to “do the thing.” In silks and woolens, which had previously dominated the British textile market, the necessary action was not taken. Both industries should have been reorganized during the 1700S. Yet as Schumpeter points out, “The rich and well-established woolen industry lagged behind, right into the thirties of the nineteenth century. It accepted progress under pressure [from cotton] and was drawn along by the more active younger sister.” The silk industry held its own but did not expand. Meanwhile, production of cotton textiles simply exploded, yielding billions of yards of fabric for export to Britain’s markets all over the world.

Eventually, after many decades of prosperity, the cotton industry itself drifted into torpor. British firms prospered so handsomely that they had little incentive to innovate further. They held to traditional mule-spinning, turning their backs on the vastly superior ring-spinning technique. And they recoiled from the commonsense idea of having the same company spin thread and weave cloth. For about 150 years after the breakthroughs of Hargreaves, Cartwright, and Arkwright, thousands of family-owned companies specialized in only one or two steps in the long process of production and were very slow to innovate. The industry declined because of “the presence of many small or medium-size firms which were inefficient but unencumbered [with debt] and could muddle indefinitely.” Schumpeter notes that “the hand jenny and the hand loom persisted for the greater part of the period and even toward the end of it there seem to have been firms which used not only antiquated power machinery, but no power machinery at all.

Meanwhile, the Americans had innovated as early as the 1830S, integrating spinning with weaving under one roof, in giant factories. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the British began to lose ground to more efficient firms in the United States and Europe, and by the time they finally modernized their factories, it was too late. Both the rise and decline of the British cotton textile industry demonstrated Schumpeter’s argument almost perfectly. Britain’s most important industry had neglected the organizational innovations so important in Schumpeter’s scheme. For this entrepreneurial negligence, the cotton textile industry paid a grievous price, particularly in the twentieth century.”

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 13)

p.257

“But the shift did not come easily. A major theme of Business Cycles is the extreme difficulty of changing traditional ways of doing things. More than most analysts, Schumpeter emphasized that the destructive part of creative destruction has always been quite real, and he stressed that those whose interests are being destroyed will fight hard to preserve their culture and status. In Britain and elsewhere, small-scale craftsmen and their guilds had esteemed artistry, community, and tradition over low prices, increased output, and expanded exports. These predilections went back for centuries, and the only way to change them was through overwhelming economic defeat.

Entrenched interests fought tenaciously against mechanization and the factory system. Unlike the Prussian inventor of a ribbon-weaving loom, who was put to death in 1579 by order of the Danzig municipal authority, “Entrepreneurs were not necessarily strangled,” but “they were not infrequently in danger of their lives.” Craft guilds in Britain invoked medieval laws to prevent both outsiders and their own members from using innovative methods. They petitioned for regulations outlawing factories and particular mechanical devices. Schumpeter cites the Weavers Act of 1555 and a “royal proclamation which in 1624 directed that a new machine for the manufacture of needles be destroyed.” And regardless of what the law might allow at a particular time, craftsmen themselves continually smashed the new machines.

In response, British entrepreneurs often moved their factories out of guild-dominated towns. Operating in the countryside, they could proceed without the fetters of official repression and with the advantage of cheaper labor –although even here, in the new outputs, innovators had to “fix things” with local authorities. Yet, whatever the obstacles, in certain industries they were almost sure to win in the long term. Large-scale factory production offered more jobs for workers, cheaper goods for consumers, a richer tax base for governments, and a dominant foreign-trade position for Britain. In London, “the political world wavered in its attitude and motivation,” but soon business interest became a major force in politics; and by the eighteenth century, Parliament had largely submitted.”

J.A. Schumpeter (desde su biografía - 12)

p.256

“Thus, a new firm’s intrusion into an existing industry always entails “warring with an ‘old’ sphere,” which tries to prohibit, discredit, or otherwise restrict the advantage afforded to the new firm by its innovation. But whatever may happen in a particular case, every entrepreneur´s high profit is temporary, because competitors will copy the innovation, causing market prices to fall. This sequence of cutting prices, which Schumpeter calls “competing down,” is observable in all industries except those protected by government monopoly. Competing down may take several years and is often hard for contemporaries to se. But one way or another, competing down always happens, and it is why Schumpeter seldom worried about price-fixing by monopolies, other than those sponsored or propped up by governments (as many firms had been in the Austro-Hungarian Empire).

Having laid out his basic model of capitalist behavior, Schumpeter proceeds to deluge the reader with historical examples. He begins with the origins of the factory system in Britain, the first major nation to industrialize. In the late 1500S, he writes, a few British entrepreneurs systematically cut their productions costs so that they could reduce their selling prices. Lower prices stimulated demand and enabled producers to manufacture in larger volume and to distribute their products more widely. Over the long term, the new factory system flourished beyond the dreams of its proponents. It gathered large numbers of workers into one place, set uniform standards for quality, and divided production into separate steps performed by specialists –al under the discipline of the clock. [Nota al pie:] “Schumpeter does not give it sufficient emphasis, but the use of the clock was a vital innovation in successive industrial revolutions. Rather than using sun time and toiling sporadically at home, workers gathered in one place and labored together under a rigid schedule. Even outside the factory, the clock changed the way people thought about life in general."

Schumpeter was careful to point out that the factory system introduced more efficient production even into “old industries” such as textiles. The shift from home spinning and weaving to mechanized production of cloth was so profound that it launched the first industrial revolution (1760-1840). Consumer’s demand for affordable factory-made cloth turned out to be almost unlimited. Men could now have not just one or two shirts and pairs of pants but sis o seven; women, not just a few dresses and blouses but many. And –very significantly- the new cotton clothing could be washed frequently unlike woolens.

The factory system modernized many other existing industries. In iron and steel, bigger furnaces facilitated “production on a large scale of standardized intermediate goods, such as ingots, sheets, rods, and wire.” Factories increased he output of a wide range of products: metalwork made of copper and brass, paper made in mills “driven by water wheels… potteries, sugar refineries… glass, soap, and gunpowder factories, and salt-boiling establishments.” Factories triggered a new era in British economic life, raising the overall standard of living and bringing fortunes for entrepreneurs.”