Competition has pushed quality so high and prices so low that few manufacturers can survive on performance and price alone. To produce value, they must give customers something to please their sensory side. Aesthetics is the killer app. 
Public policy professor Richard Florida recalls serving on a Pennsylvania economic development advisory panel. "At one of our meetings," he notes in his book The Rise of the Creative Class, "the states Secretary of Labor and Industry, a big burly man, banged his fist on the table in frustration. Our workforce is out of balance, he steamed. Were turning out too many hairdressers and cosmetologists, and not enough skilled factory workers like welders and machine-tool operators."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/view.html?pg=1
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Popular Posts
- 
Very dry, dull book with some basic financial info like ROI and cash flow. Not a lot here.
 - 
Brad Dalton is the first to admit his theory is far-fetched: that bacteria could account for odd light emissions, as well as the reddish hue...
 - 
Some good stuff from a Canadian futurist: - The rising power of the knowledge worker - Continuous training replaces job security; respect is...
 - 
I had the pleasure to attend the IBM Think conference in wet and chilly San Fran from Feb 11-14th of this year. The event overall was ...
 - 
It's been almost exaclty three years since I've updated this blog. In that three years, I've achieved a lot -- I've gone aft...
 - 
Here's my (edited) journal entry for this event dated 12/01/98: Wow. I just sessioned and started reading "The Tao of Physics...
 - 
Nother confirmation Of einstein... the first images of light escaping a black hole show that they lose energy. In this case, it was a superm...
 - 
Not a bad audio book, but I expected more. Big ideas: Build a high performance, high-trust culture; Identify desired results and un...
 - 
Increasingly, the overstretched and overburdened have a new answer to work lives of gunning harder for what seems like less and less: Dont j...
 - 
The probes findings have provided a few salient new notions about the nature of cosmic reality. For starters, the universe is 13.7 billion y...