Using Intellectual Capital to Build Two Kinds of Factories

Yesterday, I drove my mother to the airport in Providence RI after a vacation on Cape Cod. The route from Cape Cod to Providence is a mini-history lesson. You pass through New Bedford which has been a fishing hub for centuries–and still is. You pass  through Fall River which has dozens of shuttered factories built during the industrial era. There is still some manufacturing going on there. But it doesn’t look very prosperous. Of course, neither is our country. We never really replaced all the jobs that those factories created in the last couple centuries.

I have been thinking about manufacturing a lot lately. Because I am increasingly convinced that it is the key to an economic recovery. But not like those old factories in Fall River. A whole new kind of manufacturing. Read more

Clay Christensen on Disrupting Class

I just finished Disrupting Class by Clay Christensen, Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson. As a big fan of Christensen’s work on disruptive innovation, I was excited to read this book and was not disappointed. Here are the high points from my perspective:

The current system of education was designed to provide an education to large numbers of people. As our society industrialized, education went from being an individualized activity Read more

Pittsburgh’s Lessons for Detroit

The New York Times has an interesting follow up to a post from my blog at the IC Knowledge Center here about how Pittsburgh has leveraged its intangible economy to build a stronger, more sustainable future following the collapse of the steel industry Read more