It's far easier to obsess over the dry economics of an industry that doesn't make anything tangible, like manufacturing or agriculture.
Nearly two-thirds of the world's GDP now comes from the intangible service industry -- as opposed to tangible industries like manufacturing or agriculture -- where competitive advantage isn't about who's the biggest, but who's the smartest.
The canny investor would do well to hold fire until tangible evidence that the manufacturing problems are solved.
Interesting enough, without manufacturing anything tangible, the companies (Facebook,Yahoo, Google, Twitter, etc).
I could go on about the model, but I'll stop with this: There's something meaningful about creating tangible goods and revitalizing manufacturing in hard-hit regions.
The market opportunity to transform industries like engineering, science, medicine, real estate, education and manufacturing will be very tangible in the short term.
A large proportion of work in an information society involves manipulating abstract information and knowledge (understood in this context as an organized and comprehensive structure of facts, relationships, theories, and insights) rather than directly processing, manufacturing, or delivering tangible materials.
Since the creative class deals largely with images, ideas and transactions, it's not likely to focus much on reviving the tangible parts of the economy: manufacturing, logistics, traditional energy and agribusiness.
Traditional accounting methods have been designed to account for tangible assets -- like a manufacturing plant -- that depreciate over time and are reported at historical cost.
All this is pretty cool, but also potentially frustrating if you are a manufacturer, retailer or anyone else who is manufacturing or selling a tangible product: not everyone has the resources of an IKEA to create digital inventory like this.
