Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
Republics of Makers: From the Digital Commons to a Flat Marginal Cost Society E-Flux
This is a fascinating read on how digital production and a zero marginal cost society will lead back to city states.
A flat marginal cost, scaleless digital society has no technical need for scale at any size: the size of the market where the goods are sold is as irrelevant to digital commerce as the size of the factory where the goods are made is irrelevant to digital production.
The five trademarks of agile organizations McKinsey & Company
The large consulting groups are writing more & more about agile. It’s exciting to see the approach is starting to gain credibility in management spheres. McKinsey details the five trademarks of an agile organization My only rebuke of the article is that the ‘how’ to properly incorporate agile in an organization is missing.
Did Lean Startup fail at GE? Jeff Gothelf, Startups Venture Capital
General Electric was the poster child of the ‘Lean Startup’ model applied at the enterprise. The company famously announced its embrace of this new vision. However, it didn’t pan out as exactly planned with financial performance lagging. Does correlation equate causation? This author doesn’t think so and I tend to agree.
How to Build Your Own “Spotify Model” Jurriaan Kamer, Agile CIO
This is a fantastic read about Spotify’s use of the agile model in their organization; it provides great insight on how Spotify employed agile at scale and empowered their engineering teams. There are some key lessons also on how to contextualize it for your organization – you can’t copy the model.
Sustainable Sources of Competitive Advantage Collaborative Fund
This short article is a great encapsulation of the sources of competitive advantage framed in a 21st century perspective. I love the first one; learn faster than your competition.
