Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
(This is an old Photon Courier post which I dug out in responding to a post about skill shortages in manufacturing and thought might be of interest to the Chicago Boyz readership.)
The Wall Street Journal (11/16/05) covers the growing tendency of companies to do hiring based on a long string of highly-specific requirements. The article deals specifically with engineering jobs, but the same trend can be seen–though maybe not quite to the same level–in other fields, such as marketing and sales.
I usually carry my cell phone in my trouser pocket. My previous cell phones were non-folders and occasionally made calls on their own even though I used the “key lock” feature. (One phone dialed 911. I found out about it because a 911 dispatcher called back to ask if I was OK.) So I made sure that the next phone was a folding model.
A little less than a year ago, I wrote a post titled Any Color as Long as it’s White, about the project at Tata Motors (India) to create the cheapest car ever built–cheaper even, in inflation-adjusted terms, than the Ford Model T. Here’s the car. See commentary from India, here and here.
And in China, a company called BYD Auto is launching a plug-in hybrid which is supposed to be available for sale (in China) this summer. Interestingly, the parent company of BYD is a battery manufacturer.
These cars won’t be available in the U.S. anytime soon, and will likely never be available in the U.S. in their present forms. There are issues of regulatory compliance, of consumer expectations, and of the need for a sales and support structure. But any U.S. auto executives who think that these announcements aren’t very relevant to them need to do some remedial reading. In their book The Innovator’s Solution, Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor point out that disruptive innovations–those destined to change the structure of an industry–tend to attack from below. They usually first appear in a form that is in some ways inferior to the existing dominant technologies, and hence are unlikely to get the attention or respect of industry incumbents. I think it is quite likely that innovations developed by companies such as Tata and BYD–whether product design innovations or manufacturing process innovations–will in the not-to-distant future have a significant impact on the U.S. auto industry.
Not only is the photography everything we expect it to be, but unlike other magazines and TV which have gotten stupider with time to suit their markets, National Geographic is still largely educational. I learn a lot in each issue. I worked in TV for decades, but haven’t watched it at home since the 1970s since it’s mostly for dummies. I do read. (Funny thing when I would mention “People who watch TV are idiots” when I worked in TV. My colleagues agreed; they never watched whatever garbage it was they were getting paid to make, in fact, they would be surprised when friends would chide them for whatever garbage their network broadcast, and their response would be “We did what??”!)
The above quote is from Ken Rockwell, who is extremely knowledgeable about photography and seems to be generally clear-headed. What does his statement, assuming it is accurate, say about the broadcast-TV industry? Maybe Rockwell is referring to engineers rather than writers or producers, but still. To me it’s like saying that assembly-line workers at GM avoid driving GM cars. What kind of industry is run by people who won’t use their own products?
Perhaps I am reading too much into his quote, since it confirms my biases about TV.
UPDATE: John Jay adds thoughtful comments.
I’ve been going through my 2007 posts to select the best ones for a year-end summary. Here’s the first batch, encompassing the categories Education, Management/Leadership/Business, and Markets/International Trade.