Which technology to choose?

Why is almost every produced computer equipped with the QWERTY Keyboard? Some claim that QWERTY was the only feasible technology for the antique typewriters, which would prevent typebar clashes and jams. This is true for typewriters, but who is still using such an antique machine. The US Navy started to use the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK), which increased efficiency in comparison to the QWERTY system. Additionally, the world speed record in typing was performed on the DSK technology. However, no one has actually heard about the latter system. How come the QWERTY system is still the most popular keyboard technology in the world, while nowadays it is by far not the most efficient one?

In 1867, Christopher Latham Sholes invented the QWERTY system, but he was only the 52^nd person in general to invent a typewriter. However, he was the first one to prevent problems of type bar clashes and jams while typing. Sholes indentified the most frequent and subsequent letters of the English language and arranged his keyboard in a way that buttons representing those letters are placed far apart from each other. Hence, a faster typing without typebar clashing was possible. Back in history, it was a superior technology, but Sholes would not have succeeded, if a certain circumstance had not occurred. In 1873, he convinced Remington and Son, a famous arms maker in the US, to mass produce his typewriter. Sholes technology was the first typewriter system to be distributed in numbers that were high enough to reach popularity.

However, it still does not answer the question why we are still using QWERTY to type on our modern computers. David (1985) found several answers. First, there were indirect network externalities. For instance, a typist that was specialized on a QWERTY Keyboard also preferred to continue using it. Second, there were direct network effects. Every purchase of a QWERTY system had a positive externality on other users, which was partly explained through decreasing prices for the system. And third, a quasi-irreversibility of the system. That is to say with every additional purchased QWERTY system the costs for retraining increased. Those reasons resulted in a high popularity beginning in the 1890s through decreasing costs for retraining. Furthermore, with increasing numbers of QWERTY typewriters sold, the chance for employing a typist that was already specialized in QWERTY rose.

This standard has achieved such popularity that during the development of the information technologies the costs for retraining would have been higher than the gains through more efficient typing. Therefore, it is not always the best technology that will survive. It is often the one that is first accepted as a standard, which frequently becomes irreversible due to high costs. Nowadays, it is crucial to reach a critical mass for sustainable technologies. Individuals have to start to invest into the “best” technology. Obviously, during the time the QWERTY Keyboard got invented, it was very difficult to anticipate future events, and especially to see whether it is the “best” technology. Nowadays, it is still difficult, but easier to see that investments into non sustainable resource wasting objects might be profitable in a short run, but will have negative externality effects that will harm one’s profit and performance in the long run.

Sustainopreneurship

Sustainopreneurship is a quite new economic term. On the one hand it describes the concept of sustainability and on the other hand it combines it with entrepreneurship. That is to say, new ventures have to adopt e.g. sustainable technologies from the very beginning.

Very limited research has been done in that field. However, more scientific knowledge is present about how entrepreneurial courses and activities influence elementary school pupil’s decision to become a future entrepreneur. Those pupils are still developing their personality, and hence are very vulnerable. Therefore, giving them the right motivation will help them to develop entrepreneurial skills. The same concept can be reflected on entrepreneurs. Those individuals are most likely to already possess entrepreneurial skill. Therefore, they further have to be convinced from sustainable value chains. Once started the “wrong” way, it is difficult to go back to sustainable approaches, due to opportunity costs and investment losses. If they are persuaded towards sustainability in the first place, groundwork for global sustainable development is created.

Those start-ups need to receive advice and support from academic institutions, banks, private consultancy companies, and especially policy makers. However, that advice and support is not meant to be exploited. Recently, the Spanish government reduced its subsidies for solar technology firms, since foreign investors started to exaggerate appreciating those funds. Therefore, all economic agents have to work together in a sustainable way, and managers such as Josef Ackermann have to change their short term profit attitude.

An approach how labor markets could deal with a financial crisis

In times of financial crises banks have problems to finance themselves and they reduce lending to customers, which has a significant impact on the real economy. Mostly non-financial organizations are affected, since these interact with banks on a daily basis to finance their operating business. Therefore, sectors like manufacturing which have a relatively high labor percentage, suffer severe consequences due to mass layoffs . Between the start of the financial crisis in August 2007 and November 2008, 1,588,000 US workers have lost their job, which equals a labor reduction of 2.66%. Although to a weaker extent, those consequences can also be reflected on the European economy.

One might advise European governments to establish better regulations for job security, which would reduce the impact of flexible labor strategies of companies and therefore protect employees. However, traditional flexicurity approaches might help the labor market, but the consequences of the financial crisis would only be shifted to other markets and might be even worse in those. A better extension of that approach is investigated by Schmid in his paper about transitional labor markets. Here, a social integration could lead to full employment of the labor market. In order to reach full employment he comes up with the following approaches: A combination of working time reduction with life-long learning, wage subsidies for lower income groups or people that are hard to place, and a flexibilization in that sense that transitional labor markets are extended during recessions and are contracted during booms. Thus, traditional labor markets would create new jobs and would be an excellent governmental strategy for a starting point during the financial crisis.

The skandinavian authors Hakansson and Isidorsson write about 3 different types of job flexibility. The first one is called the working time flexibility. Here, governments could reduce weekly working hours. A reduction from 38 to 35 working hours per week could create 10,000,000 jobs in the European Union in the next 5 years. Furthermore, governments could also decrease the age of retirement, which would have similar effects as a working hour reduction. The second type of flexibility is the functional flexibility, there, not needed workers in the department could be shifted to other departments within their company. Governments could advise companies to do so, by offering certain benefits. The third type is the numerical flexibility, which describes a way how companies could obtain a flexible contracting system, with a low number of unlimited contracts and a higher number of period workers. Companies could react more flexible on exogenous shocks. Therefore, it would have consequences in the long run and hence create certain strength of an economy to cope better with the severe consequences of a financial crisis.