Clayton Christensen on the early days of Disruption Theory

There's a short video of Clayton Christensen on the HBR Blog Network.  In his quiet way, he  describes the wide applicability of his theory of disruptive innovation, in spheres as diverse as chip manufacture and the military.  Well worth a few minutes of your time to hear about the early days of the idea of disruption exploding in the marketplace of ideas.  Click here.

TED and the Enlightenment

TED's just hit a billion!  One billion views of those magical talks about big ideas.  In a world characterized by an insatiable appetite for salacious gossip about celebrities, TED talks have been viewed one billion times.  Wow.

TED set out to celebrate Ideas Worth Spreading.  And, as they say on the web site, "an idea, when received by a prepared mind, can have extraordinary impact".

Having just studied the Enlightenment in my World History course on Coursera, this TED milestone really got me thinking.  Everything about TED echoes the intellectual ferment in 18th Century Europe known as the Enlightenment*.

Enlightenment thinkers believed there were natural laws - about science, politics, technology, sociology -  that governed the way the world worked, and that those laws were discoverable by men who were all born with the ability to reason. (It took longer for general acknowledgement that women might also be capable of reason!)  One could/should rely on these natural laws - determined through observation and experimentation - to explain the world rather than relying on religious or classical texts or absolute rulers.  Men should be free and should participate in governing themselves.

Moreover, it was your duty to spread these ideas and influence everyone to live by the tenets discovered. That spread was enabled by the increased availability of books, the establishment of scientific societies, publication of scientific journals, and the collision of ideas and debate in informal settings like coffee houses and salons.  Ideas flowed both geographically - indeed bringing those ideas to other parts of the world was used as a justification for colonization - and vertically through different strata of society with the increase in literacy.  As our professor put it, ideas were packaged up for easy dissemination and thus became commoditized.

TED's dedication to Ideas Worth Spreading is highly evocative of these Enlightenment ideas.   Clearly, there's the dedication to ideas, from all spheres of human endeavour.  And there is a passion to spread those ideas to as many people as possible.  TED.com enabled the spread of those ideas well beyond the confines of the fortunate few who attend TED.  TEDx conferences empowered people who love ideas to create local conferences, and add to the cauldron of ideas that is the TED community.

Bravo TED and Chris Anderson, whose passion is behind this incredible phenomenon known as TED.

*  Here's a link to a description of what Coursera's all about.  And you can look here, here, here and here for my feeble efforts to summarize lectures to help consolidate my own learning.  I'm way behind.

Coastal Cities: Love 'em or Leave 'em

I just read Richard Florida's [1] fascinating and sobering article about the vulnerability of the planet's coastal cities.  Storms like Sandy generate a spike of interest in such topics.  Florida refers to an article in The Nation, which lays out three choices for our coastal cities:

• Abandon our coastal cities and retreat inland
• Stay put and try to adapt to the menacing new conditions 
• Stop burning planet-warming fossil fuels as fast as possible 

Or in my paraphrase, love 'em (options 2 and 3) or leave 'em (option 1).

Why should we care about coastal cities?  Remember Willie Sutton's response to why he robbed banks?  "Because that's where the money is".  Well, we should care about coastal cities because that's where the people are, or an awful lot of them in any case.

The ability to trade was a major growth stimulant for early cities whentrade flowed primarily over the water.  This correlation between big cities and location on a coast, meaning that today we have coastal mega-cities, with many millions of population.

Now that we are observing rising sea levels of an average of 3 mm/year since 1993 (see IPCC 2007 Working Group report here) and tropical storms and hurricanes of longer duration and greater intensity (see IPCC 2007 Working Group report here), the risk to these cities is escalating.  If we hit a tipping point where the Greenland icepack melts, the seas would rise a whopping 7 meters.

Economics is what seems to get people's attention, and Florida includes an interesting table about the potential for financial losses in huge coastal cities.  There is huge vulnerability today and even more by 2070.

Options 2 and 3 above are not cheap.  Doing nothing may be more expensive.

This whole discussion brings into sharp focus a major frustration of mine.  There's a common slogan "Save the Planet".  I don't agree with that slogan.  The planet will do just fine no matter what we do about climate change, including nothing.  What we need to think about is "Save our Civilization".   That's 'all' that's at risk with climate change.

[1]  Richard Florida is an urban studies theorist at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute

Lectures 5: History of the World Since 1300

The 15th and 16th Centuries saw a stampede of Europeans rushing to create colonies in Asia.  And they arrived as bullies.  With superior firepower to all the countries in Asia, including powerful China, they overcame wherever they went.  China was able to defend their territory and relegate the Europeans  to the margins in China.  This was fine because they were primarily after trading bases anyway.

Portugal went out to an early lead in Asia.  Vasco de Gama led the charge by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Muslim blockade.  And a rapacious, brutal explorer he was, bombarding ports and butchering sailors.   Pires followed, arriving in China with a similar absence of respect.  There was retribution by the Chinese, who executed Pires and resolved to keep Europeans at the periphery of their country.  Nevertheless, through European military technology, Portugal took Goa (1510), Melaka (1511), Hormuz (1515) and Macao (1535).  This was a totally different pattern from the style of conquest in Mexico. The Portuguese did not create an institutional system in their outposts, and their success was ephemeral.

Meanwhile, Spain took Manila in 1571 and transformed it into an important port for trans-shipment of silver from the Americas to China, displacing Japanese silver.  Manila Galleons carried 15 tons of silver a year along this 'China Road'.

The Dutch also acquired territories in Asia, taking Java in 1519 and establishing their permanent headquarters base for the Dutch East India Company.  But they went beyond just trading, and established plantations to grow nutmeg, mace, cinnamon and cloves.

After their initial success, Europeans faced some setbacks.  They had a growing need for profits to fund the religious wars in Europe.  Yet their fierce rivalry with each other was driving up the costs of maintaining and fortifying these Asian outposts.  Meanwhile, profits were dropping as the Arabs fought back by reopening the Red Sea Ports, and flooding the market with pepper and reducing its price.