What Happens When 1-Click Meets a Barcode?

It’s almost like 1-click and the barcode had a child. 1-click diminished the friction of an online purchase. Described in The Everything Store, it let Jeff Bezos increase revenue by making the purchase process easier. And, once Bezos got his…

The Unexpected Impact of the First Bar Code

A 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum was the first item ever to have a barcode checkout. The year was 1974 and the place, a Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. While for decades, people had been trying to figure out…

Eight Technologies That Will Destroy and Create Businesses

Making money was the Goldman Sachs agenda in an August, 2013 report. In “The Search for Creative Destruction,” their equity research connected Schumpeter’s creative destruction to investing opportunities. Eight new technologies, they said, would force businesses to “adapt or die.”…

A Big Problem for Libraries

Several weeks ago, I had the huge pleasure of attending the final hour of the marathon reading of Moby Dick at the Nantucket Public Library. The stacks that surrounded me were filled with books and almost everyone had a copy…

What Can We Learn From Downton Abbey Economics?

Downton Abbey can tell us a lot about the British economy…but not everything. We know the aristocracy is struggling. Many of the 700 families who had controlled 80% of all acreage during the 1870s faced financial collapse 50 years later.…

Pizza Box Innovation

Sometimes innovation happens where we least expect it. Think of the pizza box. At Domino’s, the key is efficiency. They selected the corner-cut box so that employees could quickly fold hundreds of boxes. One pizza box expert, Scott Weiner, says…

The Invention That Started to Close the Gender Gap

Worrying that labor saving devices would replace her, Downton Abbey’s cook, Mrs. Patmore, was not pleased with the new electric mixer that arrived in her kitchen in 1922. By contrast, if Edith does move out of Downton Abbey into more…