A brief YouTube clip on “Brunelleschi and Ghiberti’s Rivalry,” excerpted from the EconTalk podcast on Openness to Creative Destruction. The host and interviewer was Russ Roberts of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. If you click above, the podcast should play right within my blog.
Category: Creative Destruction
“Outsiders” YouTube Excerpt from EconTalk Podcast on Openness to Creative Destruction
A brief YouTube clip on “Outsiders,” excerpted from the EconTalk podcast on Openness to Creative Destruction. The host and interviewer was Russ Roberts of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. If you click above, the podcast should play right within my blog.
YouTube Version of EconTalk Podcast on Openness
The YouTube version of the full hour and 15 minute EconTalk podcast on Openness to Creative Destruction. The host and interviewer was Russ Roberts of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. If you click above, the podcast should play right within my blog.
Technological Progress Often Involves Minor Regress of Some Feature
(p. A1) The same types of electric-powered motors that propel Teslas past 150 mph and the Chevy Bolt as far as 238 miles on a charge, are a total buzz kill for AM reception. Instead of sports, oldies or news, it’s more like all-static, all-the-time radio.
As auto makers race headlong into an electrified future, AM radios are getting kicked to the curb, joining cassette decks, eight-track players and ashtrays.
. . .
(p. A14) One web developer offers a smartphone app that, when used with a diagnostic port adapter, can activate the dormant AM radio reception in a BMW i3 EV.
The German auto maker warns that may void the warranty, but using the app is easy, said Art Isabell, 74, a 2014 BMW i3 owner. He retired from Apple as a software support engineer and lives in Honolulu.
Even though the AM reception in his electric vehicle is sketchy, Mr. Isabell said, he wants the option: “I rarely listen to AM radio, but I want to have it available as another potential source of information during emergency situations such as severe weather, tsunamis or North Korean missile attacks.”
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 6, 2018, and the title “Your Tesla Can Go Zero to 60 in 2.5 Seconds But Can’t Get AM Radio.”)
iPhone Made Internet “Almost Ubiquitous”
(p. B3) By essentially compressing a powerful, networked computer into a pocket-size device and making it easy to use, Steve Jobs made the internet almost ubiquitous and fundamentally altered decades-old consumer habits in areas like music and books. What’s more, the functionality packed into the iPhone made it a digital Swiss Army knife, supplanting existing tools from email to calendar to maps to calculators.
. . .
Along the way, smartphones disrupted communication. By offering faster, easier ways to communicate—text, photo, video and social networks—“the iPhone destroyed the phone call,” says Joshua Gans, professor at the University of Toronto and author of the book, “The Disruption Dilemma.” “It’s funny we even call it a phone.”
For the full story, see:
Betsy Morris. “What the iPhone Wrought.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, June 24, 2017): B3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 23, 2017, and the title “From Music to Maps, How Apple’s iPhone Changed Business.”)
The Gans book mentioned above, is:
Gans, Joshua. The Disruption Dilemma. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016.
Leapfrogged Technologies, with a Few Traits Some Value, Often Persist in Small Numbers
(p. A1) Magnus Jern was sitting around with some programmers at Google headquarters when he remembered he needed to answer an email. But when he pulled out his phone and started tapping, the room grew silent.
“What is that?” one woman asked.
The reaction was no surprise to Mr. Jern, part of a die-hard band devoted to a device that was once a status symbol, then was ubiquitous, and now is almost an endangered species: the BlackBerry. Continue reading “Leapfrogged Technologies, with a Few Traits Some Value, Often Persist in Small Numbers”
Apart from R&D, Scientists and Engineers May Improve Firm Processes
(p. B5) Companies with a higher proportion of scientists and engineers are more productive than their peers, even when those workers aren’t directly involved in the research-and-development tasks that drive the most obvious forms of innovation, a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests.
. . .
Some 80% of industrial scientists and engineers work in roles outside of formal R&D, such as information technology and operations. Their knowledge and training is critical to firms’ ability to improve processes, fix broken systems and implement new technologies, says Richard Freeman, a Harvard University economist and co-author of the paper.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 27, 2017, and has the title “For a More Productive Workforce, Scientific Know-How Helps.”)
The published version of the Freeman co-authored paper mentioned above, is:
Barth, Erling, James C. Davis, Richard B. Freeman, and Andrew J. Wang. “The Effects of Scientists and Engineers on Productivity and Earnings at the Establishment Where They Work.” In U.S. Engineering in a Global Economy, edited by Richard B. Freeman and Hal Salzman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018, pp. 167 – 91.
With G.E. Exit, Dow Index Has None of Original Firms
(p. B2) General Electric, the last original member of the Dow Jones industrial average, was dropped from the blue-chip index late Tuesday [June 19, 2019] and replaced by the Walgreens Boots Alliance drugstore chain.
. . .
The removal of G.E., which will formally occur June 26, reflects a shift in the economic composition of the United States, which long ago tilted away from heavy industry and toward services, such as technology, finance and health care.
And it also amounted to a milestone for General Electric. It was the last remaining original member of the index, when the stock market measure was introduced in 1896.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 19, 2018, and has the title “G.E. Dropped From the Dow After More Than a Century.”)
Table 7.1 and Table 7.2 Correctly Formatted in Free PDF
After my last viewing of the page proofs for my Openness to Creative Destruction, formatting errors were introduced by Oxford University Press (OUP) into Table 7.1 and Table 7.2.
A PDF with corrected versions of the tables can be downloaded for free at:
https://www.artdiamond.com/DiamondPDFs/CorrectedPages_94_%20thru_96withHeading.pdf
Google Is Vulnerable to Competition
(p. A1) Google’s once-untouchable online-advertising operation took a body blow, hurt by mounting competition and struggles within its increasingly high-profile YouTube unit.
Google parent Alphabet Inc. in the first quarter posted its slowest revenue growth since 2015. The poor results highlight the risks for one of Silicon Valley’s biggest names in effectively leaning on one massive, if lucrative, business.
For all its myriad arms and efforts to diversify, Google remains essentially an old-fashioned billboard operation with a high-tech gloss—and it now faces more rivals.
. . .
(p. A4) Rivals like Amazon, once content to play in their own corners of the Silicon Valley sandbox, are making big plays at online advertising. In a potentially existential threat to Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, more online shoppers now begin their searches directly on Amazon than on search engines.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 29, 2019, and has the title “Google Shows First Cracks in Years.”)
Largest U.S. Firm Now Has 3% of U.S. Market Capitalization; In 1930s through 1990s the Largest U.S. Firm Had About 6%
(p. B5) . . . , consider the history of all the companies that have ranked No. 1 by market size. It’s full of surprises.
. . .
Hendrik Bessembinder and Goeun Choi, finance researchers at Arizona State University, calculate that the largest company in the U.S. clung to that spot for an average of 20 months from the late 1920s through the late 1950s—although it was nearly always either AT&T or GM.
From the 1960s through the end of the 1990s, the top company held the No. 1 position for an average of 12 months. From 2000 through mid-2018, the average tenure at the top was 15 months.
Over the past month, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, all with market values of $700 billion or more, have each been No. 1 for several days at a time.
. . .
The single largest stock has made up about 3% of total U.S. market capitalization for the past 20 years, according to Savina Rizova, co-head of research at Dimensional Fund Advisors, an investment firm in Austin, Texas, that manages $517 billion. That’s down from the earlier average, since the late 1920s, of nearly 6%.
. . .
All in all, Amazon’s ascendancy is a reminder not of how new this era is but how old the dominance by big companies is. In some ways, these are the good old days: The top stocks account for less of the total market, and the giants don’t appear to be much easier—or harder—to topple than they used to be.
For the full commentary, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 11, 2019, and has the title ” THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR; What Amazon’s Rise to No. 1 Says About the Stock Market.”)