1. From Innovation to Revolution
- Author:
- Clay Shirky and Malcolm Gladwell
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- AN ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE Malcolm Gladwell While reading Clay Shirky's "The Political Power of Social Media" (January/February 2010), I was reminded of a trip I took just over ten years ago, during the dot-com bubble. I went to the catalog clothier Lands' End in Wisconsin, determined to write about how the rise of the Internet and e-commerce was transforming retail. What I learned was that it was not. Having a Web site, I was told, was definitely an improvement over being dependent entirely on a paper catalog and a phone bank. But it was not a life-changing event. After all, taking someone's order over the phone is not that much harder than taking it over the Internet. The innovations that companies such as Lands' End really cared about were bar codes and overnight delivery, which utterly revolutionized the back ends of their businesses and which had happened a good ten to 15 years previously.
- Topic:
- Communications
- Political Geography:
- Iran