So for them it’s still news. Indeed, 20 years later it’s still news.

Which is why you tend to see small innovative companies come up with cool innovative products (www.trunki.com). Those would be companies built around products which are in turn built around insights into the culture/habits/behaviours which are not available to engineers.

As for R&D 2.0 – check out http://www.redesignme.com.

P.S. Don’t get me wrong – I love engineers – though on occasion they frustrate the life out of you, they are a pleasure to work with 🙂

Right? I mean…does not at all seem like a 2.0 thing..the thing here is, you know – I’m not hatin’ on the polydisciplinarity thing of bringing together developmental economists (not sure what they are, but sounds right) and anthropologists and sociologists. But, I do wonder about the strict disciplinarity of this. Putting that question aside, and its still a question, and to your point about corporate survival and how this can happen — I wonder how much of the old ways of doing things and the old people who did them can productively contribute to doing things differently. How do you move from a place of comfort to one of complete and utter terror because you are off and doing things differently, perhaps following other kinds of people, learning new idioms and languages and using other kinds of decision making tools, etc.? To your point about places that once made paper and rubber boots and cellphones and internet-y things. Etcetera.

On the other hand, that whole process does seem to be the only way that corporations can survive major changes. Companies make a thing or provide a service; corporations have the goal of the continued survival of the corporation. You know, moving from paper to rubber boots to rubber-covered cables for phones to phones to cellphones to…