thelongnews.com

Yes, it is an IBM marketing campaign, but it is an idea for the long range as well.  Sam Palmisano’s editorial in the Financial Times focuses on economic stimulus packages, but makes the (long range) point that a dollar spent on jackhammers and shovels is not nearly the equal of a dollar spent on systems that make the world run better.

I am reminded of the Toyota Production System and its emphasis on elimination of waste.  Toyota focuses on eliminating unnecessary movement of materials, scrap and rework, overproduction, inventory, even time waiting.  Systems (and likely there are computer/software systems) can be used for elimination of waste: wasted energy, wasted time, wasted resources.  If we could apply the Toyota production system — or something akin to it — to our cities and our society, we would all be better off.

One of the unfortunate problems with a measurement like GDP is that it often measures waste as an economic positive. Wasted energy has the same dollar value as productive energy. Money spent on inefficient packaging is measured the same as pollution control measures.  Money spent on hauling more trash to the dump has a positive value to GDP.  But creating less junk reflects negatively on GDP.  We need a better measure than pure financial measures. A Smarter Planet needs smarter metrics.

Note for further thinking: Geoffrey Mika has a brief article, Waste Remains the Enemy, that has a similar point of view within a manufacturing context.  Jeff Fuchs has a useful commentary on Mika’s note.