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As a parent, teacher and Greenback University staff member, I get to attend multiple commencement ceremonies each spring. I glory in what commencement celebrates, I share in the elation of the graduates as they rise and march out full of pride and potential, and I dread the two hours (sometimes more) of agonizing boredom in a folding chair that is the passive participant's lot. And in the category of "passive participants" I include most of the graduates; the commencements when I sat among the students weren't any better, as I recall.
This past weekend, I attended a ceremony where the speaker -- a distinguished alumnus with no particular podium presence -- woke me up by making one very good point. He emphasized that the world economy is in need of significant technological breakthroughs, and that breakthrough technologies are rarely created by market-leading companies. Market leaders may spend a lot of money on engineering and development, but what they're engineering and developing are efficiency improvements and marginal enhancements to existing product lines. Technological innovation comes from companies (and economies) which are trying to break into the market, not to defend it.
His case in point had to do with advances in electronics, but my mind immediately went to the automotive industry. The big players -- the market leaders when last cars were selling well, and still in the van (pun intended) as their industry proceeds in another direction entirely -- have lived in an echo chamber for years. In an industry which has thrived by artificially stimulating demand for its products, they have defended their inaction by complaining that they've only been making what their customers have demanded. Their circular logic is glaringly plain, as is the shuttering of dealerships all around Backboro.
Meanwhile, the flagship (at least initially) of the market invaders is a car company with more demand than it can supply, even at prices which few can afford. But as designs mature, production facilities increase, and economies of scale come into play, those prices are sure to drop. Indeed, the bottom line on the most recent model is only half the cost of its immediate predecessor. The company, of course, is Tesla Motors, best known for the Roadster which is the ride of choice among the glitterati. Recently, Tesla announced a sedan which is closer to what those of us who lack private bankers can aspire to (if not actually afford). I have no illusions that Tesla will dominate the 21st century automobile market -- they're attacking the high end, which is likely to be profitable first but of limited growth potential. But companies like Th!nk and ZAP are taking aim at lower-cost, higher-volume market segments. Consumers will pick the eventual winners, some of which probably haven't been founded yet. What's already clear, though, is that the winners won't include Ford (which briefly owned Th!nk) or GM (which impounded and crushed the EV-1) -- they just don't bring any useful technologies, infrastructure, management vision, distribution networks or even money to the table.
Meanwhile, on a much lighter note, I also saw the new Star Trek movie this weekend. It's far better than I'd feared, almost as good as I'd dared to hope. JJ Abrams was brought in to "reboot" the franchise, and I have to say he's done a highly credible job.
Seeing this movie on the heels of sitting through the commencement ceremony, I was struck by how the young Spock character, with his insistence on logic and incremental progress, was ill-suited to the (predictably) world-threatening challenge at hand. It was Kirk -- full of irreverence, resistent to authority, refusing to admit the possibility of a "no win" situation -- who (again, predictably) saves the day, and the world, and probably the galaxy.
Star Trek is a franchise with its roots in the 1960's, and the Jim Kirk role is perhaps the last one left which exemplifies the independent, "anything goes", can-do attitude of those times. Maybe what we need, then, is industrialists who not only "get" sustainability in all its ecological, economic and social glory, but who also "get" Jim Kirk.
And if that happens, we can all look forward to a generation of more entertaining commencement speakers.
