whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1. Netscape, the Internet and Creative Destruction
(Analysis/Analysis)

Governments do not know anything about competition, innovation or the power of individual investment. The best they can offer is collective blame shedding and the waste of taxpayers' money on pop

2. Electricity Redux - Electricity Quotas Will Work About As Well As Race Quotas
(Analysis/Analysis)

...nd ban incandescent light bulbs. The only way to promote responsible use of electricity, as well as creative innovation, is to make it expensive. As a side-effect it'll help the environment as w...

3. The Speculator: Pricing in the Future
(Analysis/Analysis)

... the US the populations are older, more educated and unemployment levels are extremely low. This has lead to innovation and an explosion of new services. The change in South Africa's economy fro...

4. Perlemoen and the Tragedy of the Commons
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ed the most dramatic social change in human history: the industrial revolution. With it came the astonishing innovations that led to the motor car, airplanes and cellular phones. The 2,000 years of ...

5. The spectre of loyalty over ability
(Analysis/Analysis)

...talking South Africa. It is the spectre that rewards loyalty over ability; craven sycophancy over talent and innovation. The result is lost opportunities and a diminished economy. The most importan...

6. Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch
(Analysis/Analysis)

Business is cyclical. Innovation changes environments and, unintentionally, destroys profitable status quos. When that happens stronger and more innovative firms pounce to buy up the assets of weake

7. Atlas Shrugged at 50
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ade, repeatedly and explicitly, is that the most able are actually the least benefited by the extent of their innovations. "In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new...

8. The tragedy of innovation: how brilliant ideas are criminalised
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ou. Sounds a lot like US and EU concerns about genetically modified crops as well. As with any development, innovation is a series of incremental steps. An exercise in optimisation. The first pestic...

9. Dave Bullard and Graham Knox: "We can't walk on water so why not try wine?"
(Analysis/Analysis)

...fficiently. Of not becoming wed to subsidies or traditional business strategies which have been displaced by innovations and changing consumer tastes. ...

10. Two Frontiers: wars of liberation and of determination
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e tools to express that knowledge, will not come again. The cries of agony, of an end to globalisation or of innovation, are the cries of a child discovering that his parents don't know all the a...

11. When equality becomes unfair: South Africa's two economies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ities with first-rate infrastructure and access to all the best that science, technology, literature, art and innovation have to offer.  These people are the nominally wealthy living idyllic live...

12. What market is worth R 100 billion a year and is growing at 10.9%?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...mpetitive in their traditional markets.   Even if you choose to ignore the informal sector, what new innovations may come out of that market to radically alter your business environment?&nbsp...

13. The US$ 5 trillion market at the bottom of the pyramid
(Analysis/Analysis)

...nce of entrepreneurship is that aspirations overcome resource limitations.”  And aspirations drive innovations. The challenge is in seeing the aspirant poor as a potential market and not a...

14. Development organisations need to engage with ratings agencies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ecause donors want to give them money but want to invest in specific projects as well.  There is limited innovation as organisations stick to the tried-and-tested for fear of losing their sponsor...

15. Aggregation and collaboration: a guide to making money and doing good in poor nations
(Analysis/Analysis)

South Africa should be one of the most sophisticated centres for innovations aimed at developing products for the world’s poorest nations; the so called “Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyram

16. Making money, doing good
(Analysis/Analysis)

...f investing in products aimed at the world’s poorest. He would be beaming about a recent technological innovation. Voxiva, a United States company, has built a system that lets health workers ...

17. The Cold War, Global Warming and the War on Ideas
(Analysis/Analysis)

...g technologies.  Not a single futurist ever came close to imagining the extent of development.  And innovation is accelerating. When Russia emerged from their communist experiment it was as...

18. Coffee, the miracle of poverty, and other wonders
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t powerful tool working to farmers’ advantage has become one of the most rapidly deployed technological innovations of all time:  the cell phone. A number of SMS markets work to ensure tha...

19. The Martians Really Care: four points to govern development
(Analysis/Ideas and Challenges)

...uld it look like? For starters, we wouldn’t allow them in to simply set up projects as and when.  Innovations and inventions are shaped towards deliverable products.  We don’t i...

20. May I have the bill, please? A lesson in wilful ignorance ...
(Analysis/Analysis)

...yalty for their service providers.  It is also that organisations are losing a wonderful opportunity for innovation and product development. Clients do know what they like and don’t like.&...

21. Vouchers and Individual Choice
(Analysis/Analysis)

...y were set up. Good schools have no way of being rewarded and bad schools no way of being shut down. A recent innovation has been to present parents with vouchers that allow them to pay their children...

22. Interpreting Emerging Market Risk Curves
(Static Content)

... be a regional power-house. The weakness is that growth is likely to be resource-based and reliant on foreign innovation and investment. Inherent instability arises from the tension between those hop...