Today’s partisan bickering can often dull critical thinking. As Americans, we pride ourselves on our freedoms of speech but sometimes permit that freedom to drown out the truly interesting and helpful dialogues we should have.
Our economic system was built on the work of Adam Smith who first coined the phrase and postulated the theory of the invisible hand. It is useful to start my blog with this review to fully appreciate the stunning revelations in the second link I would suggest you review. Here is a review of Adam Smith’s theory with some excellent illustrations. Just watch until they ask you to login to get the main point. Watch the video here.
Historically, measuring these interrelationships has been left to researchers who spent months and even years pouring over and digesting business data. Almost every one of us who has taken a college course in economics will remember supply and demand curves, and those of us who have made a career in demand response know fully well how important it is to impact the elasticity of the demand curve to control high prices.
So, with all that as background, I found this article to be one of the most stunning illustrations of the Internet of Things along with Big Data made useful.
Read the Wall Street Journals article, “Uber’s Pricing Formula Has Allowed Economists to Map Out a Real Demand Curve.”
I would like you to ponder two key points in this article: Uber and Demand Curve.
What has fundamentally changed is we now have real-time data for how markets work because of the Uber model. As some of you know, I have postulated that the future model for EE and DR is the Uberization of our current command and control thinking.
There is a lot to think about here. And, if you are still struggling, take time to read “Digital Disruption” by James McQuivey … this is really a must read because you are about to either be the manager of this disruption or the victim of it. Remember the famous warning of former Duke CEO, Jim Rogers: “If you aren’t at the table, you are on the menu!”
Methinks the dinner bell chimes …