The Boston Consulting Group today had a press release which is a not-so-weak indicator of the changing geopolitical status of China and the USA.  The most interesting paragraph was this:

Indeed, a number of companies, especially U.S.-based ones, are already rethinking their production locations and supply chains for goods destined to be sold in the U.S. For some, the economics have already reached a tipping point.

The rest of the release talks about manufacturing moving from China back to the USA, where labour costs can be cheaper and quality is higher.  It’s a changing world when it’s economically advantageous for organisations to manufacture in the US rather than China.

via BCG – Press Release – Made in the USA, Again: Manufacturing Is Expected to Return to America as China’s Rising Labor Costs Erase Most Savings from Offshoring.

From the blog of Parag Khanna comes an insightful piece about the rise of cities over states as centres of power.  This has been an interesting trend to watch  – witness California wanting to sign Kyoto when Bush didn’t, or Ken Livingston refusing to meet Bush when he visited London (much to the embarrassment of Tony Blair).  Well worth a read:

The 21st century will not be dominated by America or China, Brazil or India, but by the city. In an age that appears increasingly unmanageable, cities rather than states are becoming the islands of governance on which the future world order will be built.

via Parag Khanna.

Many of the early pioneers in the software revolution now say that if they were in the same position again, they’d be hacking life.  While this has traditionally been the realm of very expensive labs, this looks to change later this year when George Church, one of the leading researchers in the field, releases a game changer:

His lab’s device will go on sale later this year for about $90,000, and at least a dozen companies, including chemical giant DuPont (DD) and biotech startup Amyris, are considering purchasing it, says Wang.

via Innovator: George Church – BusinessWeek.

If your business involves selling  – in fact selling anything – and you are looking to see where things are heading in the future, you’d do well to spend ten minutes reading this gem of an article about an interesting change in consumer spending:

“I think there’s a real opportunity in retail to be able to romance the experience again,” says Ms. Liebmann. “Retailers are going to have to work very hard to create that emotional feeling again. And it can’t just be ‘Here’s another thing to buy.’ It has to have a real sense of experience to it.”

via Consumers Find Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness – NYTimes.com.

And if you want evidence of how it actually plays out in real life, then look n further than the Baa Code:

Icebreaker, a clothing company specialising in merino wool garments says it wants to openly show customers its commitment to sustainability and environmental friendly practice. Each garment now sports a “baa code” – a number that retailers and consumers can input at Icebreaker.com to see how the garment was made from start to finish.

Enter the Baa Code from your garment on the IceBreaker website and the resulting page tells you the story about the farm where the wool came from, the famers and so much more.

In short, it creates an experience for the buyer, and an experience that cannot be replicated by another country.  Very clever.

It would be interesting to map the number of disaster movies released with the following article extract.  It points out that in the USA shelters and bunkers are undergoing a revival, and it interests me as it’s a possible weak signal of something happening around how people perceive risk.

Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas, has built underground shelters for more than three decades, and business has never been better, says Walton McCarthy, company president.

The company sells fiberglass shelters that can accommodate 10 to 2,000 adults to live underground for one to five years with power, food, water and filtered air, McCarthy says.

The shelters range from $400,000 to a $41 million facility Radius built and installed underground that is suitable for 750 people, McCarthy says. He declined to disclose the client or location of the shelter.

“We’ve doubled sales every year for five years,” he says.Other shelter manufacturers include Hardened Structures of Colorado and Utah Shelter Systems, which also report increased sales.

via Doomsday shelters making a comeback – USATODAY.com.

In a previous post about crowdsourcing, I highlighted an important point from an HBS Working Knowledge Article:

For user innovation to be a force, the cost of creating a new design must be within the reach of a single user, whose reward is solely the improvement of his or her own experience.

The article referenced the work of Eric von Hippel and the ‘lead-user’ theory of innovation.  This basically states that small groups of people can start new industries, and for corporations to leverage this they need to work with lead users to uncover potential revenue streams.

As an example the article referenced the sport of rodeo kayaking.

It seems there is another example coming through popular culture – longboarding.  As an indicator/weak signal check this quote from an article on the sport in the NYT:

“People are always going to create their own stuff and that’s what’s happening here. These guys are creating skateboarding and reinventing skateboarding.”

via Skateboarding Glides Into a New Phase – NYTimes.com.