Steven Blustein: A New Structure Of Production—The Plug-in Entrepreneurial Network
A lot economic thinking about the structure of production and entrepreneurs’ challenges in the assembly of resources can be revised in the 21st Century. There are networks of value-driving resources already assembled, connected and operating, into which entrepreneurs can plug their business ideas. We talked to the CEO of one of the leading networks for insights into how it works.
Knowledge Capsule
Entrepreneurs are rethinking and redesigning the production structure of the economy.
Value generation includes the identification of unmet customer needs, the design of a new solution for those needs, and the assembly of a production structure to deliver the solution in the form the customer prefers to experience it.
Historically, entrepreneurs have been required to master all three components. Now they can focus on customer understanding and solution design, and plug in to a pre-assembled production structure.
Lack of supply chain and production knowledge and experience are no longer barriers to fast and effective business progress.
Let’s say an entrepreneurial firm or team has a new product – perhaps an idea, perhaps a prototype, perhaps even tested for customer response. How is to be turned into a manufactured and delivered reality? What are the product specs, what are the right fabrics and the right colors and the right feature sets, what is the compatibility with current manufacturing machinery or is customization required, what are the right production steps for packaging and surface design, what about shipping and warehousing, and marketing and sales? What financing arrangements are needed?
We can call all of these assembly steps a “supply chain”. If the team does not have supply chain knowledge or the experience of creating products quickly, then great challenges, consuming lots of time and effort, lie ahead.
What if all this knowledge and experience were available for any entrepreneurial project or team to plug into, seamlessly, with the freedom to pick and choose customer elements, selecting the very best resources, but only those that are ne
Article from Mises Wire
