C
raft is, in general, far less well-paid than professional work. Yet the benefits it offers — the satisfaction of controlling one’s own destiny, acquiring a range of skills, creating beautiful and delicious things, forming friendships with suppliers and customers — make up for the reduced incomes and ensure that there is a small, steady migration of professionals into the craft economy. Noah Smith depicts craft brewing as one path forward for the middle class, that could serve as a model for other industries:
Path to The Artisan Economy Craft beer offers one small way in which an enterprising, hard-working individual can bootstrap themselves to the middle- or upper-middle-class and accumulate some capital. Finally, digital fabrication is bringing back the principles of artisan economy: As a result, standardized, centralized production is no longer either needed or warranted. Digital masscustomization, or the mass-production of different pieces at the same unit cost, is the universal technical and economic logic of digital manufacturing — the default mode of use of all digital tools.
Azeem Azhar Exponential Thinking, Exponential View London, United Kingdom. Founder of PeerIndex which processes social data using machine learning to identify novel, actionable signals. Startup after management, founder, and adviser roles at Seedcamp, eSouk, AMI Software, PlanetOut, Daylife, EVI & others. Invested in more than 20 early stage companies, with several exits. Product launches and innovation after launching products / running innovation programmes at The BBC, Reuters, The Guardian and The Economist. Formerly a correspondent at The Guardian and The Economist
23 sqwawqs Issue 4 March 2018
I've spoken at business schools such as Harvard Business School, London Business School and IMD and at conferences such as LIFT, ETRE, Latitude59 and others. I've been interviewed by BBC, WSJ, New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, Technology Review, The Daily Telegraph, Le Monde, Bloomberg, Sky News, CNN, Red Herring, Techcrunch, Mashable, VentureBeat, Vogue and others. My columns & articles have been widely published around the globe.