214
10 The Economy 4.0
recharge their smartphones even during a blackout. As a positive side effect, the
Charge Beacons also serve as community hotspots where people meet.
The third winning team, Helping Hands, developed a smartphone app that allowed
everyone to ask for and offer help. For example, one could request baby food, fresh
water, or support for someone in need at a specific location. Others could offer clothes,
water, food, or various kinds of support. The smartphone app would locally match
resources with needs. This empowers the community to help itself and to harness the
generosity witnessed during crises. As a consequence, the public disaster response
teams will be able to focus more on providing aid in areas where people can’t help
each other well enough. Thus, the above-described approach frees up resources for
urgent and strategic matters. Consequently, both the citizens on the bottom and the
governance system on the top will benefit. Remarkably, all of the above concepts
emanated from a single hackathon, on a single day!
The observations of Yossi Sheffi in his book The Resilient Enterprise are also
relevant in this context.
37 He describes what it takes to keep a business running
when struck by disaster. Sheffi (*1948) contends that the boss must provide a framework that allows the company’s experts to find solutions. However, he/she shouldn’t
interfere with the details of this process, as attempts to micro-manage are often counterproductive. Instead, the aim should be to empower the staff to find solutions for
themselves.
But given that we may never experience a disaster in our lifetime, why should
we all care about disaster response management? Because it offers guidance how
to successfully deal with complex problems. In fact, this example is highly relevant
to many of the challenges faced in politics and business today. It sometimes seems
that, by the time one problem is solved, there are already one or two more problems
waiting to be fixed. In a rapidly changing, highly variable world which is difficult to
predict, we need flexible governance systems that can quickly adapt to new events
and local needs (see Fig. 10.3). This will determine the resilience, viability and
success of a complex system under pressure, which may be a company challenged
by competitors, a city struck by disaster, or a country exposed to the pressures of
globalization.
10.14 A New Kind of Economy Is Born
As discussed above, the optimal organizational approach to disaster response
management combines elements of both, centralized top-down control and
distributed bottom-up organization. Could we adopt this approach not just in crisis
situations, but every day? In fact, the creation of goods, services and knowledge in
the emerging Economy 4.0 works exactly like this.
A critic might argue that I am “reinventing the wheel”, because some companies
have already been managed this way. In fact, many companies subcontract work
37 Sheffi [13].
10 The Economy 4.0
recharge their smartphones even during a blackout. As a positive side effect, the
Charge Beacons also serve as community hotspots where people meet.
The third winning team, Helping Hands, developed a smartphone app that allowed
everyone to ask for and offer help. For example, one could request baby food, fresh
water, or support for someone in need at a specific location. Others could offer clothes,
water, food, or various kinds of support. The smartphone app would locally match
resources with needs. This empowers the community to help itself and to harness the
generosity witnessed during crises. As a consequence, the public disaster response
teams will be able to focus more on providing aid in areas where people can’t help
each other well enough. Thus, the above-described approach frees up resources for
urgent and strategic matters. Consequently, both the citizens on the bottom and the
governance system on the top will benefit. Remarkably, all of the above concepts
emanated from a single hackathon, on a single day!
The observations of Yossi Sheffi in his book The Resilient Enterprise are also
relevant in this context.
37 He describes what it takes to keep a business running
when struck by disaster. Sheffi (*1948) contends that the boss must provide a framework that allows the company’s experts to find solutions. However, he/she shouldn’t
interfere with the details of this process, as attempts to micro-manage are often counterproductive. Instead, the aim should be to empower the staff to find solutions for
themselves.
But given that we may never experience a disaster in our lifetime, why should
we all care about disaster response management? Because it offers guidance how
to successfully deal with complex problems. In fact, this example is highly relevant
to many of the challenges faced in politics and business today. It sometimes seems
that, by the time one problem is solved, there are already one or two more problems
waiting to be fixed. In a rapidly changing, highly variable world which is difficult to
predict, we need flexible governance systems that can quickly adapt to new events
and local needs (see Fig. 10.3). This will determine the resilience, viability and
success of a complex system under pressure, which may be a company challenged
by competitors, a city struck by disaster, or a country exposed to the pressures of
globalization.
10.14 A New Kind of Economy Is Born
As discussed above, the optimal organizational approach to disaster response
management combines elements of both, centralized top-down control and
distributed bottom-up organization. Could we adopt this approach not just in crisis
situations, but every day? In fact, the creation of goods, services and knowledge in
the emerging Economy 4.0 works exactly like this.
A critic might argue that I am “reinventing the wheel”, because some companies
have already been managed this way. In fact, many companies subcontract work
37 Sheffi [13].