Social Return Ought to Be the Basis for Light Train Fare Adjusments 310.0
The recent decision on fare adjustments for the light rail trains seem to me a wrongful application of financial accounting on what is essentially a social service beyond mere transport. Light trains especially provide other intangible but measurable social return to the community that ought to be considered in the fare adjustments and in structuring [...]
Industrial Policy Wears Many Guises in America from Alexander Hamilton 308.0
Industrial Policy has been equated with Socialism in America from the middle off the 20th century. As an epithet hurled at President Obama typically by tea party members, Socialism is taken today as a term of abuse. Industrial policy has become a cliché where mere mention is often followed by outright rejection. In today’s cluttered [...]
Manufacturing-Enterprise Resource Planning Enables Plant Productivity 304.0
Implementing the right factory software information systems (ICT) enables productivity for manufacturing firms. ICT is a general purpose technology that, when applied correctly, has been proven to improve productivity. ICT in manufacturing increases productivity in three ways, first by institutionalizing business processes, second by improving coordination among factory functions, and, finally, by hard-wiring empowerment for [...]
Postwar Japan Created Modern Industrial Policy and Innovation Systems 302.0
From reading the news everyday, our instinct is to mistrust government as innately corrupt and inept in delivering welfare. Postwar Japan proved otherwise in reviving the country while creating and then using modern industrial policy and innovation systems to facilitate its dizzying growth rate from 1950 to 1972. Our neighbors South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and [...]
Modern Industrial Policy Discovers Locomotives in Global Supply Chains 297.0
Modern versions of industrial policy and the broader field of development economics are coming back into center stage says Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz in an IMF blog. This renewal comes after the failure of neoclassical macroeconomics to forecast the recent financial crisis and to explain the continuing success of emerging markets like China and India [...]
Business Model Innovation Triggers Growth and Locks Value 281.0
I have the kernel of a growth framework that can work for firms. It looks like a general framework for emerging markets development that I have been working on in SYNTHESiST for the past two years. I realized this while preparing for a brief talk on innovation and strategy with a leading multinational firm. This [...]
Competitiveness Demands Social Innovation in Institutions 274.0
None of the five pillars in President Noynoy Aquino’s first Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP), that is being drafted as I write this post, addresses the needed social innovation in Institutions to improve competitiveness for the Philippines. Other than as based on Professor Cantwell’s capabilities, competitiveness is also defined differently by other folks. These definitions [...]
Change Management by Co-evolution of Institutions 273.0
Change management is part of my teaching focus and consulting practice but it clearly just applies at the firm level. At the sector or national innovation systems level, technical change with co-evolution of institutions and industry structure for catch-up by emerging markets seems more apt for SYNTHESiST. Thus to provide a focus with the apt [...]
Catch-up Innovation Systems for Emerging Markets 264.0
This is a great book for someone looking at innovation from a theoretical, evolutionary economics standpoint – the papers are good focusing devices for guiding a practical strategy for a country like the Philippines that must be finally defined by local context. The book looks at innovation mainly from a social science point of view [...]
Waiting for the 2010 Nobel Prize Winners 246.0
Th 2010 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was updated on October 11, 2010: Peter Diamond (MIT), Dale Mortensen (Northwestern University), Christopher Pissarides (LSE) shared the prize for research that improved the understanding of search frictions in markets. Their work allowed a more realistic case than classic perfect competition in [...]
Beyond Productivity – Competitiveness or Innovation? 245.0
In a telephone conversation, a dear friend gave a reaction to the series of posts that SYNTHESiST had on productivity – on Frederick Taylor, Six Sigma, Paul Krugman on competitiveness and McKinsey and design thinking. She mentions that they have moved beyond productivity to competitiveness as the higher goal. This post integrates my views on [...]
