UP Links 12 September 2013

+ Kari Kohn

Clayton Christensen in Harvard Business Review on Internal Startups in the Consulting Industry

Consulting firms that hope to incubate a technology-assisted model will want to revisit the lessons Christensen laid out in The Innovator’s Solution. As he has often said, self-disruption is extremely difficult. The day after you decide to set up the disruptive business as a separate unit, the illogic of the new business to the mainstream business is not magically turned off. Rather, second-guessing about the initiative persists, because the logic is embedded within the resource allocation process itself. That second-guessing must be overcome every day.

Entrepreneurship as the Norm

The concept of employment as we know it today really didn’t exist until the industrial revolution. When the means of production became too complex and costly for an individual or a family to afford, the factory, and along with it the job, was born. It was only when factories and large organizations displaced independent producers that working for someone else became the expected norm. The industrial revolution didn’t just change the way people lived and worked, but it changed what people thought was the preferred way of earning a living. In a fairly short period of time, working a job and climbing the corporate ladder became perceived as the pathway to success and entrepreneurship became something slightly outside of the norm.

Innovative Systems of Rules in Cities - Perhaps Worth Copying?

The city of Bogotá, Columbia wanted to attract IT investors, but research found that a lack of English speakers was stopping the growth of that sector. “In 2008 we developed a program called Talk to the World to certify English-speaking people. Right now, 10,000 people are certified as English speakers, helping investors to find talent,” Adrianna Suarez, director of the city’s Invest in Bogotá agency, told McKinsey. The city also introduced free investment support, ranging from providing help for permit applications to running programs to train local workers. As a result, foreign investment rose 27 percent in the span of a year.

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Data in Cities

The use of data in cities pits top-down against bottom-up in a similar way. One side stresses the need for citywide planning and control, the other advocates just providing access to data that lets citizens make their own decisions…
...One of the great things about cities is that they can and do compete with each other. In most countries people have at least some choice as to which city to live and do business in. The quality of the information platform a city offers will increasingly become a factor in those choices.

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