Innovation in emerging economies is the next big business revolution, from The Economist. Also see their special report on the topic.

Long Cycles and the Start of a New Golden Age

Thought this article by Mark Stahlman in Strategy + Business was fascinating. It says that:

- We're in the middle of a 60-year technology cycle.
- The last 30 years have been all about investment and deployment of technology.
- The current crash is a typical phenomenon that happens mid-cycle when financial speculation runs too hot
- The next phase of the cycle is a "golden age" of technological adoption and maturity

Please read it and let me know what you think.

Cool article in Newsweek about the emerging field of cultural neuroscience. Researchers are using brainscans to identify the ways people from different cultures process information. Some commonly recognized cultural values are directly reflected in the brain areas people from those cultures use to process different types of information -- recognizing people, concepts of self and group, even doing math.

Hyperlocal Urban Development

Very cool blog post from Allison Arieff in the NYTimes.com site. Describes urban planners using GIS to identify abandoned, publicly-owned spaces in San Francisco and plan for their re-development.

"Looking through this lens also enables us to think about infrastructure in a new way. The era of massive, expensive, centralized projects like the Big Dig in Boston has passed. “Now, with the ability to model dynamic systems, we can show a much more decentralized collection of resources could provide greater benefit,” de Monchaux says. “If, in the 19th century, it was a biological metaphor that fueled the creation of Central and Golden Gate parks, the idea that a city needs hearts and lungs to grow, there’s now a networked metaphor. The city is a dense network of relationships. The best way to provide infrastructure is to not go in with a meat ax but to practice urban acupuncture, finding thousands of different spots to go into.”"

High End R&D Increasingly Coming to India

Major multinationals (MNCs) have rapidly increased the scale of their R&D operations in India. See this brief description from Rediff.com Business.

India vs. China - Which is stronger after the recession?

Yup. I agree with this article in Time Magazine's online edition. Although India's recovery in the last year has been slightly less spectacular then China's, I think the underlying growth here is much more sustainable.

Darwinian Economics

Cornell Prof. Robert Frank blogs in the NYTimes about the economic lessons in Darwin's theories of evolution. Frank contends that Darwin provides a better framework for understanding competition than Adam Smith's Invisible Hand concept:

Smith’s basic idea was that business owners seeking to lure customers away from rivals have powerful incentives to introduce improved product designs and cost-saving innovations. These moves bolster innovators’ profits in the short term. But rivals respond by adopting the same innovations, and the resulting competition gradually drives down prices and profits. In the end, Smith argued, consumers reap all the gains.

The central theme of Darwin’s narrative was that competition favors traits and behavior according to how they affect the success of individuals, not species or other groups. As in Smith’s account, traits that enhance individual fitness sometimes promote group interests. For example, a mutation for keener eyesight in hawks benefits not only any individual hawk that bears it, but also makes hawks more likely to prosper as a species.

In other cases, however, traits that help individuals are harmful to larger groups. For instance, a mutation for larger antlers served the reproductive interests of an individual male elk, because it helped him prevail in battles with other males for access to mates. But as this mutation spread, it started an arms race that made life more hazardous for male elk over all. The antlers of male elk can now span five feet or more. And despite their utility in battle, they often become a fatal handicap when predators pursue males into dense woods.

(Image from NYTimes.com)