Weekend reading is truly a gift. Just had a chance to read Umair Haque's "A Manifesto for the Next Industrial Revolution," which is a must read. Before reading he suggests you first read his guest post at Leading Green on new DNA first.
Finally, a call to arms upon all of us in this new frontier of the Web! Time to really push our latest innovations like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube into the direction of actually harnessing their power as tools of change.When we develop or invest in new technologies, especially web-based tools, we have to push ourselves a little harder than we are right now. How can we use Twitter to fight global hunger? How can mobile video rapidly share knowledge and information in third-world countries?
We can't take for granted that we benefit in the US from an incredible financial market system that rapidly allows for capital to be raised developing a product or service out of little more than an idea. We have a competitive advantage in innovation in this country. Unfortunately, we also have a very US-centric worldview, or at best a first-world one. We can do better than that. We can design the next wave of innovation with a broader world in mind. It's not just that we should, but we absolutely must.
Excerpt from Umair's post:
How do we begin reorganizing the industrial economy? By using markets, networks, and communities to alter the way resources are managed: to weave a fabric of incentives for sustainable growth and authentic value creation into the economy - a new economic fabric that’s meaningful to people.
Google utilized a market - AdWords - to utterly eviscerate a stale, broken media value chain. Here's a more visceral example. Muhammad Yunus revolutionized finance - not by collecting more money to lend, but by using communities to fundamentally alter the value equation of lending to the poor. The result was industry transformation.
See the similarity? Two vastly different industries - finance and media - were both revolutionized by new DNA. It was new ways to organize and manage that exploded the boundaries of value creation.
The revolution needs revolutionaries. Today’s investors, boardrooms and entrepreneurs are looking for value in all the wrong places. Facebook's game of musical chairs won't solve big economic problems - and neither will making token investments in greentech.
Where is the next industrial revolution crying out for revolutionaries? Simple: in industries dominated by clear, durable, structural barriers to efficiency and productivity.
The next industrial revolution begins here. What happens when we think of using new DNA to reorganize structurally inefficient industries? A blueprint for the next industrial revolution emerges. Here’s what it looks like.
Organize the world's hunger.
Organize the world’s energy.
Organize the world’s thirst.
Organize the world's health.
Organize the world's freedom.
Organize the world's finance.
Organize the world's education.
