Monday January 23, 2012
The experession in our title refers to the idea that say Grandfather starts a business by working hard and long.
Son inheirts the business and does reasonably well as long as the growth cycle does not fall too far into the maturity cycle.
Grandson comes along as the maturity cycle kicks in, there is ample competition and duplication by others, and bingo, the business is gone.
These days all that can happen a lot faster as evidenced in this article about iPhones in China.
The US has lost its manufacturing base. Actually the temp employees in Austin, Tx as semi conductor firms model a lot of what this article describes. But once we lose this ability to adapt as we had during WW II, it is near impossible to get it back, just ask Britain.
anybody ever see the movie Swing Shift? Goldie Hawm never got credit for making the serious movies she made and this is one of them. It features a god look at WW II production and how we did it.
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