Context for the Current Crisis

This is a really interesting post from Hanna Edwards, “New York City Real Estate Goddess:”

“Throughout history, the middle class has also been “squeezed” by the adaptation of the old guard to the innovations of the times. Once the big guys get the gist, they swallow or copy the innovator. Constant innovation is required. The same is true today. Those who have the ability to recognize changes and work with them are the ones who will be able to survive the constant storm as it roars around us. Those who have given up their desire or ability to innovate, and instead are happy with “a good job” are the ones with the least security, because when the market changes, they can’t change with it.”

Edwards calls for young people to start their careers as microentreprneurs, saying the lessons they learn would be more powerful than entry-level  jobs in large corporations that drain their “passion and energy.”

An interesting counterpoint to Edward’s post can be found in the ideas presented by Michael Mandel, Chief Economist at Business Week, in in interview segment that I transcribed here at the IC Knowledge Center. He says that the job creation from the technology boom of the 1990′s stopped a number of years ago (innovation adaptation by  Edward’s old guard?). This left, Mandel explains, housing and consumption as the primary drivers of of economic growth…and we all know how that ended. He describes the role economists are playing through work to identify the drivers that need to be cultivated to fuel the next wave of innovation.

Each of these writers are calling in different ways for new approaches to innovation. Mandel looks at it as an economist from the top down.  Edwards wants to build it from the bottom up, one entrepreneur at a time.  Two interesting takes on a challenge that won’t go away: how to fuel the next great burst of growth in our economy.