Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Can Innovation Continue to Drive Long-Term Economic Growth?

Has the ideas machine broken down? is the lead article in the January 12 issue of The Economist.  The article takes a look at what it calls innovation pessimism, - the notion that we are in a long-term period of slow innovation and growth despite our rapidly advancing technologies and hyperconnected economies.

“With the pace of technological change making heads spin, we tend to think of our age as the most innovative ever,” says The Economist in the article’s overview.  “We have smartphones and supercomputers, big data and nanotechnologies, gene therapy and stem-cell transplants.  Governments, universities and firms together spend around $1.4 trillion a year on R&D, more than ever before.” 

“Yet nobody recently has come up with an invention half as useful as that depicted on our cover.  With its clean lines and intuitive user interface, the humble loo transformed the lives of billions of people.  And it wasn’t just modern sanitation that sprang from late-19th and early-20th-century brains: they produced cars, planes, the telephone, radio and antibiotics.” 

Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon is one of the leaders of the innovation pessimism camp.  In a recent paper, - which he describes as deliberately provocative, - he questions the generally accepted assumption that economic growth is a continuous process that will persist forever.  Perhaps the slow growth we are experiencing in the US and other advanced economies is not cyclical, but rather evidence that long-term economic growth may be grinding to a halt.  The rapid growth and rising per-capita incomes we experienced during the Industrial Revolution of the past two and a half centuries might have been a unique episode in human history.

The Evolution toward a Global Digital Money Ecosystem

I recently read an excellent article, 2012: The Year in Payments - A Look Back At The News And The Noise In Payments by Karen Webster, CEO of Market Platform Dynamics and founder of PYMNTS.com.  In the article, Webster reviews some of the major developments in digital payments over the last year, and gives her opinion of what is likely to happen in 2013 and beyond.  Beyond her detailed reviews and predictions, the article is a very well written overview of the evolution toward a digital money economy, including the major advances already underway as well as the huge challenges that still lie ahead. 

For several years now I’ve been convinced that the development of a global digital money ecosystem is among the most exciting and important societal challenges in the coming decades.  It’s right up there, in my opinion, with other technology-based transformational innovations, including electricity, the telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet and World Wide Web.

Where are we in digital payments?  Webster believes that 2012 will be viewed in the payments history books as a very good year.  “Payments innovation fueled by the IP-enablement of devices used by consumers and merchants to interact drove payments innovation into high gear.  Players large and small flooded the market with new applications, new business models, and new approaches to transforming the shopping experience.”

Global Trends 2030 - Living Through a Transformative Period

The National Intelligence Council is the center for mid- and long-term strategic thinking within the US Intelligence Community.  Every four years, it develops a Global Trends report with an approximate time horizon of fifteen years in order to provide the White House and the intelligence community with a framework for long-range strategic policy assessment.  Its latest report - Global Trend 2030: Alternative Worlds (GT2030) - was released this past December. 

“This report is intended to stimulate thinking about the rapid and vast geopolitical changes characterizing the world today and possible global trajectories during the next 15-20 years,” it states in the Executive Summary.  “As with the NIC’s previous Global trends reports, we do not seek to predict the future - which would be an impossible feat - but instead provide a framework for thinking about possible futures and their implications.”

GT2030 has identified four overarching megatrends that are expected to shape and transform the world over the next couple of decades: individual empowerment; the diffusion of power; demographic patterns; and the growing nexus among food, water, energy and climate change.  These megatrends are pretty knowable.  They are well underway today.

Reflections on Big Data, Data Science and Related Subjects

A couple of months ago I was appointed executive-in-residence at the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), an interdisciplinary applied science research institute led by NYU and NYU-Poly in partnership with academic institutions, global companies and New York City government agencies.  CUSP’s overriding mission is the study of “the grand technical, intellectual, engineering, academic, and human challenges posed by a rapidly urbanizing world.”   It was formally launched last April by New York City’s mayor Michael Bloomberg. 

CUSP’s research and educational programs are centered on urban informatics, - “the acquisition, integration, and analysis of data to understand and improve urban systems and quality of life.”  Big Cities + Big Data and Bringing Urban Data to Life are prominently displayed in its website. This coming September, it will start offering two new programs in Applied Urban Science and Informatics, a 30-credit Master of Science, and a 12-credit Advanced Certificate. 

Given the central role of big data with CUSP and with other initiatives I’m involved with, I’d like to step back and reflect on what this all means.