Making things

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Yesterday I had a brilliant visit to the Rolls Royce aero engines plant in Derby. Factory visits are always fascinating, and this was particularly so. It’s of course a superb company, and its qualities manifested themselves in all kinds of ways: the focus of the conversations on the long term, on 2020 and 2025; the superb apprenticeship and management training programmes, now being provided for companies in the supply chain as well as Rolls Royce itself; the fact that everyone I spoke to from apprentices to top execs talked about their bit of the business in a way that was consistent and fitted into the same overall strategic picture. Above all, of course, the engines. Amazing technology, so complex, highly dependent on research, long-term investment, IP and skilled people. It was interesting to hear the emphasis on ideas and skills, and on services provided with the product, in a manufacturing company.

A Rolls Royce engine – one of the big ones

There have been a couple of excellent books recently on the areas of strength in UK manufacturing – [amazon_link id=”0349123780″ target=”_blank” ]Made in Britain[/amazon_link] by Evan Davis and [amazon_link id=”0300117779″ target=”_blank” ]The New Industrial Revolution[/amazon_link] by Peter Marsh (the latter is speaking at the Festival of Economics in Bristol on 24 November). (See also the excellent TV programmes by Evan D, Built in Britain, which turned to infrastructure.) Given that I also recently heard about the potential for a significant revival of the Lancashire textiles industry (to which I have an emotional attachment), I do tend to agree with these two authors in believing that our manufacturing industry still has areas of strength.

[amazon_image id=”0300117779″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The New Industrial Revolution: Consumers, Globalization and the End of Mass Production[/amazon_image]

However, I think there are two big worries. One is about investment in skills: we have had far too few industrial apprenticeships for too long, and although this is improving slowly, it will take many years to rebuild a sufficiently large skill base. There is also still too much of a presumption that university is better than an apprenticeship – I would disagree with this priority on academic or cognitive skills.

The second is the gap between the superb big companies like Rolls Royce and small, albeit vigorous, manufacturers. The UK needs the middle rank of companies that can feasibly supply the biggest ones – the small ones just can’t deliver on an appropriate scale, can’t afford to invest either in basic R&D or even product development, can’t take on more than one or two apprentices. A lasting manufacturing revival will need to look again at the long-standing barriers that are stopping successful small companies from growing above a certain size.

Real life freakonomics?

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I’m very pleased to receive a book that’s just been delivered (apologies to the courier Cabbage just barked at fiercely). It’s [amazon_link id=”0674047486″ target=”_blank” ]Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America[/amazon_link] by Jonathan Levy. It’s about the developing concept of risk in 19th century America, and the development of risk-management institutions.

[amazon_image id=”0674047486″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Freaks of Fortune[/amazon_image]

The blurb makes it sound fascinating – the argument seems to be that personal freedom meant assuming personal risk – and then offloading it to an insurance company or futures market. So this sounds highly relevant to the post-crisis debate. It also reminded me of course of the magnificent [amazon_link id=”0471295639″ target=”_blank” ]Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk[/amazon_link] by Peter Bernstein. Risk is such an important concept, and one our brains find it so hard to think about, as Daniel Kahneman spelled out in [amazon_link id=”0141033576″ target=”_blank” ]Thinking, Fast and Slow[/amazon_link]. Slow, probablility-calculating thinking takes a lot of effort and energy. Time for some chocolate….

[amazon_image id=”0471295639″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk[/amazon_image]

I’ll write about Freaks of Fortune when I’ve had chance to read it – meanwhile, here is a taster by Jonathan Levy from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

First movers and fast second

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I was reading my dear husband’s blog post about the new iPad mini and the Microsoft Surface, the latest entrants to the tablet market. It reminded me about a terrific book co-authored by one of my mentors, the late Paul Geroski. The book is [amazon_link id=”0787971545″ target=”_blank” ]Fast Second[/amazon_link], written with Constantinos Markides, written int 2005 so it pre-dates tablets. But the hypothesis may apply.

Their argument is that in a radically new technology, the supposed first mover advantage may be ephemeral: “The firms that end up capturing the new market are those firms that time their entry so they appear just as the dominant design is about to emerge…. For big, established firms contemplating entry into a new radical market, this is the best strategy to follow.” This is what they mean by fast second – neither first mover, nor second-mover i.e. waiting for a clearly dominant design and standards, and offering a cheaper me-too product.

The examples in the book include IBM in mainframes, GE in CT scanners, Canon in cameras, Sharp in faxes. I don’t know whether the iPad challenger tablets would count in Paul’s view, or whether the iPad mini will fend off fast seconds, but it’s worth pondering.

[amazon_image id=”0787971545″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership)[/amazon_image]

Facts and fictions

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Martha Nussbaum has written an interesting review in the TLS of two books about India. They are Katherine Boo’s [amazon_link id=”1846274494″ target=”_blank” ]Behind the Beautiful Forevers[/amazon_link] and Siddartha Deb’s [amazon_link id=”0865478732″ target=”_blank” ]The Beautiful and the Damned: Life in the New India[/amazon_link].

[amazon_image id=”0865478732″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India[/amazon_image]

I’ve read and reviewed here the former, and haven’t read the latter. Nussbaum shares my caveat about Boo’s book, namely its use of novelistic techniques. She writes in her review:

“The English novel was a social protest movement from the start, and its aim (like that of many of its American descendants) was frequently to acquaint middle-class people with the reality of various social ills, in a way that would involve real vision and feeling. [amazon_link id=”B000JQUT8S” target=”_blank” ]Dickens[/amazon_link] wrote of child labour, [amazon_link id=”B004XZBH64″ target=”_blank” ]Frances Trollope[/amazon_link] of the stigma of illegitimacy, [amazon_link id=”1853260053″ target=”_blank” ]Thomas Hardy [/amazon_link]of seduction and class exclusion. In some cases novels of social oppression had large consequences….. John Steinbeck’s [amazon_link id=”0141185066″ target=”_blank” ]The Grapes of Wrath[/amazon_link] had a comparable impact, educating the American public about the plight of migrant workers and producing support for New Deal legislation.

When the poor are in a distant country, narrative that conveys the texture of daily lives is even more urgently needed.”

But she argues that novelistic techniques should be confined to novels, while non-fiction demands analysis and evidence. She concludes:

“Katherine Boo and Siddhartha Deb could easily have included enough historical and economic analysis to permit their readers to come to some conclusions about such matters, but they did not. The result is that their books have great power to provoke emotion, but little to channel that emotion into constructive political action.”

For myself, I think that’s fine – it’s the author’s prerogative to have a book do only one thing. There’s room on the bookshelf for emotion as well as economics. However, I do agree with Nussbaum that – whatever rhetorical approach is taken – one needs to keep the boundary between fact and fiction clear.

The joy of books

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Joe Queenan has written an essay in the Wall Street Journal (based on his new book, [amazon_link id=”0670025828″ target=”_blank” ]One For The Books[/amazon_link]) about how he became addicted to books.

[amazon_image id=”0670025828″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]One for the Books[/amazon_image]

Books, books, books. I love them too. I always read books about books: Susan Hill’s [amazon_link id=”1846682665″ target=”_blank” ]Howard’s End is On The Landing[/amazon_link]; Francis Spufford’s [amazon_link id=”0571214673″ target=”_blank” ]The Child That Books Built[/amazon_link]; Ann Fadiman’s[amazon_link id=”0140283706″ target=”_blank” ] Ex Libris[/amazon_link], and so on.

The best bit of Queenan’s very funny essay is his defence of the need for books, the physical objects. He writes:

“Books as physical objects matter to me, because they evoke the past. A Métro ticket falls out of a book I bought 40 years ago, and I am transported back to the Rue Saint-Jacques on Sept. 12, 1972, where I am waiting for someone named Annie LeCombe. A telephone message from a friend who died too young falls out of a book, and I find myself back in the Chateau Marmont on a balmy September day in 1995. ….

None of this will work with a Kindle. People who need to possess the physical copy of a book, not merely an electronic version, believe that the objects themselves are sacred. Some people may find this attitude baffling, arguing that books are merely objects that take up space. This is true, but so are Prague and your kids and the Sistine Chapel. Think it through, bozos. …. There is no e-reader or Kindle in my future.”

I read this inwardly shouting, ‘Yes! Yes!” I too use travel tickets as bookmarks and leave them in the book, the better to remember reading them the cafe in Verona or on the flight to Belfast.

Flying back from Belfast

The part Queenan misses out it the joy of second hand books and bookshops. On my flight back from Belfast I finished reading a beaten-up old Leo Malet story about his detective Nestor Burma, [amazon_link id=”B003BPT2L4″ target=”_blank” ]L’homme au sang bleu[/amazon_link].

L’homme au sang bleu

I bought it on our summer holiday in Brittany in this marvellous warren-like bookstore, open only in the afternoons, seducing tourists as they drive past towards Cap Frehel.

Bouquinerie

I have many objections to e-readers, but perhaps the biggest is that they prevent the sharing of books. I can’t read the same books as my husband, who has a dreadful e-book habit, so I can’t talk to him about them. I couldn’t put e-thrillers I’ve read on the book-swap shelf at the local station. I wouldn’t be able to take them to the charity shop or sell them to a second hand bookstore. But what kind of civilisation would we be without second hand bookstores?