Random Quotes and Links
October 8, 2009
Rohit Bhargava on the Future of Business
The future of business isn’t about leveraging Twitter or weathering the storm, or even finding the next great groundbreaking product. The ones who really change our world for the better will be the ones most passionate about doing it.
A Radical Plan for Helping Poor Countries
Romer, an economist, is a leading expert on the dynamics of economic growth, and he sees the tale of Hong Kong not merely as a historical irony, but the answer to one of the knottier problems of our time: the great global chasm between rich and poor. And to close that gap, he argues that the world needs not one but a hundred Hong Kongs, what he calls “charter cities.” In his vision these would comprise a global archipelago of economic powerhouse city-states, located in the world’s poor nations but built and run by wealthy ones.
He sees charter cities as beachheads where laws and institutions and habits that have worked in the wealthy world can take root, and as civic laboratories where new ways of doing business and hybrids of local and imported customs can emerge. Unemployed workers and frustrated entrepreneurs from the host country would flock there for the opportunities; international firms would be drawn by the combination of First World stability and cheap labor. And from these nodes, money and expertise, laws and norms would spread throughout the rest of the country and, potentially, the developing world. Ultimately, their work done, the cities would revert to local control.
Self-driving Electric Concept Car
For the Autonomobile, by contrast, Mike and Maaike “set out to design a concept car which questions current obsessions of speed, styling and driving in search of an optimistic new future.” As Dezeen notes, this search for new performance measurements led the designers to “focus on quality of time while in traffic and transit.”
What they came up with is a seven-seat lounge pod meant to allow comfortable productivity or social time while you’re stuck in traffic or rolling along at moderate speeds. The premise is that it’s rare that we use our cars’ max acceleration or MPH, so we might as well give up some of that performance in favor of a more relaxing, efficient ride. The Autonomobile has no steering wheel, brake pedal or driver seat, and to provide more interior space, Mike and Maaike envision electric motors in each wheel and energy (some of it generated using rooftop solar panels) stored beneath the vehicle floor.
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