Everything’s changing. This is something that a growing number of enterprises is having to face in these times – at least for those who want to survive and truly thrive as markets evolve, and means of production change, and as new ways of approaching the outside world arise. Indeed, everything must change, and quickly, often nearly instantaneously, so much so that, at times, it’s speed that wins the day and not the quality of what you do. First and foremost, the culture of enterprise – the living core of manufacturing – must change.<\/p>
A good read in this sense is a recently published work by Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society (available, naturally, in both hard copy and as an e-book). <\/p>
All things considered, his central thesis is a simple one when he says that we are witnessing the onset, around the world, of a new economy that he calls the “Collaborative Commons”, which owes its very existence to the Internet of Things and is something that could – and in Rifkin’s view it has already begun – eclipse both capitalism and socialism. <\/p>
But this is not the sort of revolution that will lead to destruction. Not at all. As Rifkin explains, the Collaborative Commons is changing the way in which we organize our lives economically and points to a potentially drastic reduction in wage disparity by democratising the global economy and bringing about more environmentally sustainable society. The driver of this revolution is the Internet of Things, a sort of intelligent infrastructure made up of a virtuous interplay of the Internet of communications, the Internet of energy, and the Internet of logistics that will push productivity to the point at which the marginal cost of a great many goods and services will be nearly zero, thereby making them all practically free, highly abundant, and no longer subject to market forces. A new economy coming into being.<\/p>
We can already see that some things are changing. In Rifkin’s view, the rise of zero marginal cost is creating a hybrid economy, with one part oriented towards the capitalist market and the other towards the Collaborative Commons. This is giving rise to what Rifkin calls “prosumers”, i.e. consumers that have become producers in their own right, creating and sharing information, entertainment, green energy, and 3D-printed products at near-zero marginal cost. But that’s not all. They are also sharing cars, homes, clothing and other things using social media at low or near-zero marginal cost. The author gives the example of students taking online courses free of change and which operate at near-zero marginal cost, or of young social entrepreneurs who are bypassing the banking establishment and using crowdfunding to finance environmentally sustainable businesses in a new economy that uses alternative currencies. <\/p>
As explained in the book, social capital is as important as financial capital, access trumps ownership, sustainability supersedes consumerism, cooperation ousts competition, and “exchange value” in the capitalist marketplace is increasingly replaced by “sharable value”. <\/p>\n
Rifkin concludes that capitalism will remain with us, but by the end of this century it will no longer be the sole arbiter of economic life, not to mention the great waste that is created in an era of transformation, one in which progress and obstacles go hand in hand.<\/p>\n
Utopia? The dream of a visionary? We can’t be sure, but Rifkin’s ideas are to be examined with care as they go to the heart of the organisation and culture of enterprises and their approach to manufacturing and the markets. As usual, Rifkin provides us with a provocative read, like salt in the wounds of enterprise, but also salt that can help stimulate an appetite for understanding, for pondering more the present and looking with greater care to the future. <\/p>
The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism<\/strong><\/p>\n Jeremy Rifkin<\/p>\n Palgrave Macmillan Trade, April 2014 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everything’s changing. This is something that a growing number of enterprises is having to face in these times – at least for those who want to survive and truly thrive as markets evolve, and means of production change, and as new ways of approaching the outside world arise. Indeed, everything must change, and quickly, often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n