If you read about the Industrial Revolution, you can't avoid steam. Newcomen. Watt. Corliss. The good old external combustion engine.
However, if you live in the modern world and just happen to be enrolled in that esteemed class of proletariat known as the "Knowledge Worker," the only steam that you're apt to encounter is that which fogs up the mirror in the bathroom of the hotel on your last business trip.
It's nice, then, when the modern world gets a glimpse of steam in its classic, 19th-century state. That's what happened this weekend in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, at the New England Wireless and Steam Museum. It's called the Yankee Steam-Up and it's an annual gathering of engineers, hobbyists, historians, know-nothings and steam engines, large and small.
Once a blog about innovation, entrepreneurship, and business history. Now in proud disarray.
Special Notes for Entrepreneurs
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Monday, September 16, 2013
The Founding Fathers as Innovators: Republic 1.0
(Source: uvamagazine.org) |
In many ways this obsession with seeking the blessings of our founders
is unique. We don’t worry, for example,
if Henry Ford would endorse our newest manufacturing processes, what Babe Ruth thinks
of the designated hitter rule or if Louis Armstrong cares for rap. Likewise, the French don’t wonder what
Charlemagne would say about their current immigration policy just as the British,
Wood points out, feel no need to check in periodically with either of
the two William Pitts.
WWTJD? Exactly.
So, it’s interesting to reflect on the fact that the Founding Fathers’
greatest accomplishment—beyond their individual achievements with electricity, writing declarations, and winning wars—was constructing their grand experiment in
self-government: Republic 1.0. As
political entrepreneurs, Washington and company launched a radical innovation
in the global market, ran it for a while, and then handed it over to the next
generation of management.
What did they think of the nation they had created? Were they pleased? Did Republic 1.0 measure up to their
expectations? Did each die content in
his achievement, or, like Victor Frankenstein, aghast at the unintended
consequences of the monster they had fashioned?
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