Great examples of near pure monopolies
A big hat tip to one of my students Arno Albici for spotting a superb article in the Economist about a cluster of mid-sized Japanese manufacturers who continue to enjoy near pure-monopoly power in highly specific, high value-added businesses. decades of industry expertise and reinvesting profit to fund high levels of research and innovation continue to give these companies a remarkable competitive strength in the market. The barriers to entry for rival manufacturers are very high and this helps to explain the limited contestability in the global marketplace.
For example:
Shimano earns around $1.5 billion a year by supplying 60-70% of the world’s bicycle gears and brakes
YKK makes around half the world’s zip fasteners by value,
75% of motors for hard-disk drives in computers come from a firm called Nidec
90% of the micro-motors used to adjust the rear-view mirror in every car are made by Mabuchi
“Many technology products have become commodities, but certain components have not, since they require continual innovation. So entry barriers to the business of making them remain high, and although the margins on the final goods have deteriorated, the margins on specialised, high-end components are still juicy.: Much more here
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Paul Romer on Growth and Cities
BBC Radio’s Global Business this week sees Peter Day in conversation with Professor Paul Romer from Stanford University, Paul Romer is an expert in the causes of long run run growth and his current focus is on the economics of new cities in developed and developing countries. It is a programme well worth listening to, Romer is tremendously optimistic about the opportunities created by faster economic growth - especially growth built around innovation and appropriate rules systems.
read more...»Kindlenomics
Amazon has announced that it will start shipping the Kindle e-reader in the next few days. Leander McCormick-Goodhart is doubtful about whether this spells the end of books. The Kindle device is part of an increasingly contestable market space whose size is set to rise sharply in the months and years to come. I have added a few links to Leander’s blog post. According to Chris Nuttall in an FT blog last month “there are now more than 45 e-reader models available worldwide, according to E Ink, the dominant technology provider for their displays.”
read more...»Explaining Creative Destruction
Leander McCormick-Goodhart provides an overview of the concept of creative destruction
read more...»The Times interviews Google’s Eric Schmidt
This is a hugely interesting interview with the CEO of Google Eric Schmidt. The questions and issues covered range from the future of cloud computing, the decline of traditional print media through to the challenge of maintaining an innovative momentum in an organisation that now employs over 20,000 people.
“So we have 20 per cent time for example, which means that engineers can spend roughly one day a week working on things they find interesting. We let people create start-ups within Google—Wave, Android and Chrome are some examples of the company within a company model.
This link takes you to the rest of the interview
World Economic Forum drops UK a place in competitiveness rankings
I always take the annual rankings of international competitiveness with a pinch of salt. There are plenty around - the latest has just been published by the World Economic Forum - all of which have a different methodology and emphasis. That said they do offer some interesting and useful insights on the current state of health of any particular country and also some of the underlying strengths and weaknesses especially on the supply-side.
The World Economic Forum places the UK as the 13th most competitive economy in the world in the new rankings - down four places from the 2007-08 table.
According to the WEF our main strengths are:
*An efficient of labour market (ranked 8th globally)
*We are ranked 8th on the technological readiness pillar.
*The country continues to have “sophisticated and innovative businesses, characteristics that are important for spurring productivity enhancements.”
But the fragile nature of our financial system is the Achilles heel this year
“The drop in rank is largely attributable to a weakening of the assessment of the country’s financial market, which has slipped from 5th to 24th place since last year, based on rising concerns in the business sector about the soundness of banks (126th) on the back of several banking-sector bankruptcies and bailouts. In this context it is not surprising that a significant and growing weakness remains the United Kingdom’s macroeconomic instability (71st, down 13 places since last year), with low national savings, an exploding public-sector deficit (related in large part to recent efforts to bail out the financial sector), and consequential public indebtedness”
Emerging Leaner, Stronger, Fitter from the Recession
Hamish McRae considers how businesses are responding to the challenges of recession in his Economics Life piece in the Independent this morning. Drawing on a new report from management consultants Arthur D Little he considers some of the strategies that businesses are adopting given the special nature of this downturn. Improving hygiene, fitness and building muscle ahead of the recovery figure prominently and there is a fascinating graphic illustrating some of the priorities of firms at this unusual time.
“Businesses that do survive the present harsh climate will emerge in much better shape. All downturns speed up the process of structural change in the sense that things that were going to happen anyway happen much faster that they would have done. But the speed of this one has been so extreme that the world is cramming a decade of such change into a year or 18 months. As a result a lot of firms that still appear weak right now may emerge in rather good shape when demand returns.”
Improving hygiene: Actions to cope short-term with the implosion of confidence and collapse of demand e.g. rationalising operations and cutting overhead
costs, turning fixed costs into variable costs: 80-90 per cent of business respondents are giving these actions very high or high priority.
Fitness: Keeping talent on board is a very high or high priority for 82 per cent of respondents. Maintaining R&D and innovation expenditures is a very high or high priority for 67 per cent of respondents.
Muscle Building: preparing for the world to come beyond the downturn, for example building stronger relationships with regulators or a high priority to preparing for the low-carbon economy
Arthur D Little Prism magazine
A Walk on the Clunky Side
The Sony Walkman was one of the innovations of its day - freeing up the music lover to play their favourite tracks on the go - thirty years on this appealing BBC magazine feature contrasts the iPod Nano with the Walkman which is thirty years old. A reminder of the benefits of innovation.
Innovation - A Driving Dynamic for the Economy
Innovative products and processes are the lifeblood of a competitive economy. With attention focused on the likely depth and duration of an economic recession, across the country there are many businesses who have one eye fixed firmly on the recovery and on continuing to develop and test new products. This superb and spirit-lifting BBC video pays a visit to Cambridge Consultants a business that has enjoyed its best ever year during a year of recession - ideas and investment businesses that can gain access to the finance that remains available look well placed to reap the benefits of their innovations - always providing they can get the products to market.
The video features a ‘virtually waterless’ laundry washing machine prototype developed by Xeros. By saving up to 90% of water compared to conventional machines, the Xeros process has the potential to reduce the cost of washing whilst also dramatically cutting carbon emissions.
Windows for a new generation?
It seems that Joseph Schumpeter’s process of creative destruction is still going full throttle ahead, with Google’s announcement this week of a operating system (Chrome OS) to rival Microsoft’s dominance through Windows.
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