The Rich Get Busy and the Poor Get Poorer

in Books, Business, History | August 8th, 2007

Gre­go­ry Clarke, an eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an at UC Davis, offers an unusu­al take on the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion in his upcom­ing book, A Farewell to Alms. Most schol­ars argue that the chang­ing insti­tu­tions of industrialization–factories, cor­po­ra­tions, cities–worked togeth­er to drag us humans into the mod­ern world. Clarke turns that idea on its head.

As the New York Times put it in a recent review, Clarke “believes that the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion — the surge in eco­nom­ic growth that occurred first in Eng­land around 1800 — occurred because of a change in the nature of the human pop­u­la­tion. The change was one in which peo­ple grad­u­al­ly devel­oped the strange new behav­iors required to make a mod­ern econ­o­my work. The mid­dle-class val­ues of non­vi­o­lence, lit­er­a­cy, long work­ing hours and a will­ing­ness to save emerged only recent­ly in human his­to­ry.”

The most fas­ci­nat­ing part of the argu­ment is that, accord­ing to Clarke, these val­ues spread in part because the upper class­es were more suc­cess­ful at breed­ing and mak­ing sure their off­spring sur­vived to adult­hood. By exam­in­ing his­tor­i­cal wills and prop­er­ty exchange, Clarke deter­mined that “[t]he mod­ern pop­u­la­tion of the Eng­lish is large­ly descend­ed from the eco­nom­ic upper class­es of the Mid­dle Ages.” Gen­er­a­tions of ille­git­i­mate off­spring, prof­li­gate par­ents and non-inher­it­ing prog­e­ny sal­lied forth and mar­ried into the low­er class­es, bring­ing their cap­i­tal­ist ways with them.

If this the­o­ry holds up, it might shed some light on the rise of the Eng­lish nov­el. The great Vic­to­ri­an nov­el-writ­ers have traced uncan­ni­ly sim­i­lar process­es of social inter­min­gling and dis­per­sion, and it’s a tru­ism that almost every sto­ry piv­ots around an inher­i­tance. We might visu­al­ize the process as hun­dreds of char­ac­ters cir­cling a few well-guard­ed piles of mon­ey. Most of them end up set­tling for less, and most of the dra­ma and ten­sion in the plot arcs stem from these com­pro­mis­es. And, of course, the nov­els trace the spread of just the bour­geois virtues Clarke is research­ing.

Clarke’s work rais­es a dis­turb­ing larg­er ques­tion: is this a form of Dar­win­ian selec­tion at work? Is cap­i­tal­ism hav­ing an evo­lu­tion­ary impact on human progress? Or is that a ridicu­lous propo­si­tion? To see for your­self, you can check out the first cou­ple of chap­ters for free on Clarke’s web­site, here.

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The Fifteen Minute Book Machine

in Books, Business, Media | August 3rd, 2007

A cou­ple of years ago I met Jason Epstein in pass­ing and he excit­ed­ly described his new project: a machine to print On Demand Books. The plan is final­ly bear­ing fruit: the Espres­so Book Machine was demon­strat­ed at the New York Pub­lic Library on Wednes­day. Three of the machines are out in the wild, and I sus­pect many more will appear if the pro­to­types live up to the hype.

The idea of books on demand is a lit­tle eerie but emi­nent­ly effi­cient. Pub­lish­ers and book­sellers waste mil­lions of dol­lars, tons of fuel and forests of paper ship­ping, return­ing and trash­ing unsold books every year. And if a machine like this isn’t too expen­sive to run, it could rev­o­lu­tion­ize edu­ca­tion in less acces­si­ble or wealthy parts of the world. The real ques­tion is whether such a machine might do to book­stores what Net­flix has done to video rental stores. The Espres­so machine can only print paper­backs, so for now I think Barnes and Noble is safe. And even if the shelves are replaced with dig­i­tal brows­ing dis­plays one day, many cus­tomers will still want to enjoy their pur­chas­es with an over­priced lat­te and pas­try. The social spaces of book-read­ing have yet to be destroyed by Amazon.com or the blo­gos­phere, so I think they’ll sur­vive a new kind of espres­so machine.

What Book Changed Your Life? Par­tic­i­pate in a Group Project. Tell Us and Become Eli­gi­ble for a Prize .

Check out our col­lec­tion of free audio­books.

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The Rise of the Cultureboxes, Part 1: The Xbox

in Business, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | July 18th, 2007

xbox 360The online mag­a­zine Slate runs most of its arts and cul­ture sto­ries in a sec­tion called “Cul­ture­box.” Iron­i­cal­ly, it’s tak­en the con­sumer elec­tron­ics indus­try sev­er­al years to catch up, but now it seems like every new gad­get is mar­ket­ed as a cul­ture­box, from the shiny iPhone to the pio­neer­ing Tivo to the hot-run­ning Xbox 360. Man­u­fac­tur­ers, adver­tis­ers and pro­duc­ers every­where are think­ing about how to sell us sleek­er, bet­ter box­es and the media that go with them.

The trou­ble is, nobody is quite sure what the cul­ture­box should look like or what it should do. We can all agree on video, audio and some kind of stor­age func­tion. But do we want our media pock­et-sized or on a big screen? Is the goal to enter­tain us on the com­mute or to build up a library of cher­ished media objects? More impor­tant­ly, when we say “cul­ture” do we essen­tial­ly mean tele­vi­sion or the whole panoply of forms? Are cul­ture­box­es just TV by oth­er means or are there gen­uine­ly new cul­tur­al forms on the hori­zon?

Last week Microsoft announced that Xbox 360s are fail­ing in unprece­dent­ed num­bers: A dra­mat­ic exam­ple of Cul­ture­box Anx­i­ety Syn­drome. The new gen­er­a­tion of videogame con­soles allow us to do so much more than blast­ing aliens—video on demand, HD and Blu-Ray DVD play­back, online chat­ting and music library man­age­ment are just a few of the roles these par­tic­u­lar cul­ture­box­es want to serve. The com­plex­i­ty is clear­ly an over­load: the New York Times argues that the $1 bil­lion Microsoft is set­ting aside for this prob­lem implies that between a third and half of Xbox 360 con­soles could get the cul­ture­box blues. Now a high-lev­el Xbox exec­u­tive has announced his res­ig­na­tion, though few peo­ple think it’s a pun­ish­ment since the plat­form is gen­er­al­ly sell­ing well.

Per­haps I’m only writ­ing because I use all these gad­gets and my Xbox recent­ly suc­cumbed to “red ring of death” syn­drome. Iron­i­cal­ly, it only freezes up when I use it to load a videogame. But there is a broad­er issue here: the trans­for­ma­tion of cul­ture from some­thing we expe­ri­ence in con­cert halls, movie the­aters and oth­er shared pub­lic spaces into some­thing that we do on the couch or on the go.

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Starting Startups: A Free Course (and More) for the Entrepreneur

in Business, Entrepreneurship | March 27th, 2007

Entre­pre­neur­ship and Busi­ness Plan­ning is a free course avail­able via pod­cast (iTunes  Feed  Mp3) that par­al­lels a class­room course being offered at Carnegie Mel­lon with­in the Mas­ters in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Man­age­ment (MISM) pro­gram. Taught by Mark Juliano, an adjunct pro­fes­sor who oth­er­wise works in the pri­vate sec­tor, the course cov­ers the ins-and-outs of start­ing a new ven­ture. Fol­low­ing a very log­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry, it starts with the fun­da­men­tals — devel­op­ing ideas for new com­pa­nies, writ­ing busi­ness plans, and cre­at­ing teams — and then moves through more advanced mate­ri­als that you’d typ­i­cal­ly find cov­ered in b‑school: mar­ket­ing, com­pet­i­tive strat­e­gy, sales, pric­ing, fund­ing and finance. Final­ly, when you dive into the pod­casts, you’ll real­ize that Juliano has clear­ly tak­en pains to present an acces­si­ble course for lis­ten­ers. Along with clear­ly pre­sent­ed lec­tures, you get a host of sup­port­ing online mate­ri­als, plus a course blog. A very nice touch.

Next, the busi­ness-mind­ed folks among us will also want to pore over the stel­lar col­lec­tion of entre­pre­neur­ship edu­ca­tion resources assem­bled by the Stan­ford Tech­nol­o­gy Ven­tures Pro­gram. Their media con­tent trove includes a sol­id col­lec­tion of pod­casts fea­tur­ing talks with busi­ness thought lead­ers (iTunes  Feed  Web Site), not to men­tion a cache of videos high­light­ing pre­sen­ta­tions by the exec­u­tives and VCs who make Sil­i­con Val­ley tick. Just gen­er­al­ly, you’ll want to explore the many oth­er resources in the Edu­ca­tors Cor­ner.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

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Business School Podcast Collection — Download MBA Podcasts and other Business Podcasts

in Business | February 16th, 2007

Please vis­it our updat­ed col­lec­tion of Free Busi­ness Cours­es Online and relat­ed busi­ness resources.…

  • Dar­d­en School of Busi­ness (The Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia) iTunes — Feed — Web Site
  • Entre­pre­neur­ial Thought Lead­ers (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty) iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of week­ly lec­tures on entre­pre­neur­ship joint­ly spon­sored by sev­er­al pro­grams at Stan­ford. Fea­tures speak­ers from Google, Genen­tech, and Juniper Net­works, among oth­ers.
    • Fuqua School of Busi­ness (Duke Uni­ver­si­ty)iTunes Web Site
      • One of the rich­er col­lec­tions out there.
    • HBR Idea­Cast (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty) iTunes Feed Web Site
      • From the Har­vard Busi­ness Review, this col­lec­tion fea­tures lead­ing thinkers in the busi­ness and man­age­ment world.
    • Tomorrow’s Chal­lenges present top-ranked busi­ness school IMD’s lat­est research results. Fac­ul­ty dis­cuss crit­i­cal busi­ness top­ics such as lead­er­ship, inno­va­tion, change and gov­er­nance. See www.imd.ch/tc for in depth arti­cles.IMD Tomorrow’s Chal­lenges Pod­cast Audio Feed Video Feed
  • Lead­er­cast iTunes Feeds
  • Knowl­edge­cast iTunes Feeds
    • These two pod­casts come out of one of Europe’s elite busi­ness pro­grams.
  • Knowledge@Wharton Audio Arti­cles (Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia) iTunes Feed Web Site
    • An off­shoot of the school’s online busi­ness jour­nal called “Knowledge@Wharton.” Pro­vides “audio arti­cles” that­fea­ture high-pro­file exec­u­tives and fac­ul­ty, includ­ing sev­er­al that high­light stock mar­ket guru Jere­my Siegel.
  • Lon­don Busi­ness School iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of audio and video pod­casts shar­ing the lat­est in news and thought lead­er­ship from the Lon­don Busi­ness School, which is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.
  • MBA Pod­cast­er iTunes Feed Web Site Infor­ma­tion and advice for those look­ing to get into b‑school.
  • McK­in­sey High Tech Pod­casts iTunes Web Site
    • Obvi­ous­ly McK­in­sey is not a b‑school, but it’s the big kahu­na con­sult­ing firm and they put out some infor­ma­tive pod­casts. Here are ones from their high tech prac­tice.
  • Sloan School of Man­age­ment (MIT) iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness iTunes Web Site
    • This col­lec­tion notably includes sev­er­al pod­casts that describe how to opti­mize your appli­ca­tion to busi­ness school.
  • Times Online MBA Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Some of the world’s lead­ing busi­ness thinkers pro­vide the lat­est think­ing in eco­nom­ics, man­age­ment, finance, strat­e­gy and mar­ket­ing.
  • Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth, Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Strate­gies iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Radio Tuck brings you ground-break­ing dig­i­tal inter­views, straight from the busi­ness lead­ers of today.
  • Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, Ross School of Busi­ness iTunes Web Site
  • Yale School of Man­age­ment iTunes Web Site

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Digital MBA: America’s Best Business Schools on Your iPod

in Business, Economics, Most Popular | January 29th, 2007

WhartonIs it some­thing of an odd­i­ty to see the words of famous philoso­phers and his­to­ri­ans get­ting dig­i­tized

and down­loaded to iPods every­where? Sure it is, and that’s why we gen­er­al­ly like talk­ing about human­i­ties pod­casts. But is it strange to think of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing busi­ness schools carv­ing out a space on iTunes and bring­ing their ideas to an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence? Hard­ly. For schools whose suc­cess depends on being close­ly tied to the pulse of Amer­i­can and glob­al audi­ences, get­ting involved with pod­cast­ing is a no brain­er.

Let’s take a brief tour of what Amer­i­ca’s top b‑schools are up to these days, start­ing with The Whar­ton School of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia. Launched about a year ago, this pod­cast col­lec­tion (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) is an off­shoot of the school’s online busi­ness jour­nal called “Knowledge@Wharton.” And what you get here are “audio arti­cles” that fea­ture high-pro­file exec­u­tives and fac­ul­ty, includ­ing sev­er­al that high­light stock mar­ket guru Jere­my Siegel. Some of these pod­casts focus on time­less b‑school issues (strat­e­gy, inno­va­tion, merg­ers, alliances, etc.). Oth­ers explore more time­ly ques­tions: New Mod­els for TV and Inter­net, What Makes an Online Com­mu­ni­ty Tick?, and Which New Tech Com­pa­nies Are Inno­vat­ing Most?. Most are worth your time.

From Philadel­phia, we move to Har­vard in Cam­bridge. This pod­cast col­lec­tion, known as HBR Idea­Cast (iTunes  Feed), is also close­ly aligned with the school’s busi­ness jour­nal, the famed Har­vard Busi­ness Review. And, here again, you get well-pro­duced audio seg­ments that offer insights on key issues in today’s busi­ness world, whether it’s how to do busi­ness in Chi­na, how to be an effec­tive and resilient leader, or how to adapt to very new trends in e‑commerce.

Mov­ing south to the Research Tri­an­gle, we vis­it Duke’s Fuqua School of Busi­ness (iTunes — Web Site), which has the begin­nings of what promis­es to be a strong audio col­lec­tion. While you’ll want to give the most time to the fair­ly robust Dis­tin­guished Speak­er Series, you may want to peruse the MBA Lead­er­ship and Mar­ket­ing Expe­ri­ence series as well. Also in the same gen­er­al vicin­i­ty is anoth­er col­lec­tion worth a good look. It’s from the Dar­d­en School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia (iTunes — Feed — Web Site)

By now, you prob­a­bly have a good sense of what you can gen­er­al­ly expect to find in these col­lec­tions. So let’s briefly leave you with two last ones. First, the com­pi­la­tion assem­bled by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness (iTunes  Feed  Web Site). Among oth­ers, you’ll encounter talks by Nobel Prize win­ner Gary Beck­er and also Steven Levitt, the co-author of the recent best­seller Freako­nom­ics. Last­ly, we end at Stan­ford and its series called “Entre­pre­neur­ial Thought Lead­ers,” which gives you access to what Sil­i­con Val­ley has in no short sup­ply — entre­pre­neurs, includ­ing ones from Google, Genen­tech, and Juniper Net­works. Click. Down­load. Sync. And you’ll be in busi­ness.

For more pod­casts, see our uni­ver­si­ty pod­cast col­lec­tion and also our  com­plete pod­cast col­lec­tion here.

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Digital MBA: America’s Best Business Schools on Your iPod

in Business | January 15th, 2007

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