Machines For Living

Video: Sprawl, the Single Greatest Threat to Mankind

Deep Multi-Sided Business Models

William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle, casts a vision for the next industrial revolution   based on Cradle-to-Cradle design of all products and services as ecosystems.  From a business perspective I believe a deeper understanding of multi-sided business models (central to today's technology industries) is possible when we apply them to an ecosystem-based Cradle-to-Cradle design model.  Whereas multi-sided business models, exemplified by the likes of eBay and Google, are important in markets with multiple sides desiring interaction, players in the next industrial revolution understand that all markets have multiple sides - you just have to look deeper.   Urban renewal expert David Barrie, for example, explains how real estate displays the same multi-sided logic, just on a deeper level. The next industrial revolution will require deep multi-sided business models that address the cooperative networks behind any product or service in order to provide the same products, but in a way that stimulates and captures all network externalities as nutrients: value nutrients, technical nutrients and biological nutrients.  

Players in the next industrial revolution understand that all markets have multiple sides.  The next industrial revolution will require deep multi-sided business models that address the cooperative networks behind any product or service in order to provide the same products, but in a way that stimulates and captures all network externalities as nutrients: value nutrients, technical nutrients and biological nutrients. 

Obama's Stimulus Planners: Design Jobs lead to Green Collar Jobs

President-elect Obama's much anticipated Economic Stimulus Plan is in danger of prolonging out-of-date economic ideas, with its anachronistic search for "shovel-ready" projects.  Governors and Members of Congress are telling Obama that, if the purpose is to stimulate the economy, then the Stimulus should be spent on "shovel-ready" projects that create jobs in the short-term.  Missouri, for example, has said it would spend all of its money on highways, and none on St Louis mass transit. Environmental and smart-growth advocates are warning that this focus on traditional transportation projects will result in "roads to nowhere" that only deepen our dependence on foreign oil and increase greenhouse gas emissions, all while transit budgets are being slashed even though transit ridership still breaks new records despite falling gas prices.

It's precisely because traditional roads projects invest relatively little in design that they are "shovel-ready".