After writing about my lessons learned from two TED talks on economic growth, I stumbled over a post of Rohan Rajiv on new production methods and their impact on employment. I totally agree with his take-away that looking forward, looking for solutions, and looking for opportunities is the only way to deal with such developments. Populist forces will always try to exploit the fear and uncertainty from those changes - from a political point of view it is therefore ever more important to create opportunities for those most affected by change. As Rohan mentions, what those solutions are may not be obvious yet, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look for them.

The example of 3D printing though is one that connects nicely with an issue I mentioned in my post referenced above - the insufficiencies of GDP to provide an accurate measurement of value. Just because we are more productive tomorrow and can produce the same goods at lower costs, doesn't necessarily mean that they have lower values to their user. Today I came across an interesting article by the World Economic Forum on this topic. It is an ongoing series of articles that might be worth reading, I think.

In the future, people should be able to sustain a higher standard of living at comparatively lower costs. However, if we keep using GDP as the one and only measure, we risk not reflecting the value from those achievements. This in turn questions many aspects of our current economic system - think about what happens if people don't see "growth opportunities"? Where will investments go? How do you deal with low/no return?

The problem is not that we are not innovating. The problem is not that we fail to increase the standard of living of many people. The problem is that we don't measure our system in a way that reflects those achievements, and that puts the system at risk.

I do not argue that changing the way we measure value creation will be the silver bullet to solve our society's problems. On the contrary, more solutions will be needed to address the changes for many people from new technologies such as 3D printing. But in order to find solutions that work, we need to be able to measure the costs & benefits of potential solutions.

As usual, I have simplified a lot in order to share my thoughts in a concise manner. As a human being I am not immune against making wrong conclusions - I may have missed a critical point or neglected mentioning crucial assumptions. Letting me know your opinions via Linkedin, Twitter, or E-Mail will help me further reflect on my thoughts and learn from such mistakes.