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[ BAILLIE GIFFORD ]
From 3D printing to industrial biotech, companies in the Scottish
Mortgage portfolio are taking technological advances to the next level.
A new generation of businesses are reshaping our world and what is
possible by reinvigorating the manufacturing process
The future of
manufacturing
The value of your investment and
any income from it can go down
as well as up and as a result your
capital may be at risk.
T
he Santa Fe Institute’s
Professor Brian Arthur has
done much to revitalise
economic theory in the
light of 21st century advances.
His research on how technology
evolves, how innovation works, the
study of complexity economics and
the concept of increasing returns,
has been seminal and has greatly
influenced our thinking over time.
Twenty-five years ago, Arthur
asserted that “Western economies
have undergone a transformation
from bulk-material manufacturing to
design and use of technology – from
TRUSTNET
processing of resources to processing
of information, from application of raw
energy to application of ideas.” This
transformation created the base for the
concept of increasing returns to scale
in industry, where knowledge reigns
supreme over mass manufacturing.
Professor Arthur used Microsoft to
illustrate the shift to an increasing-
returns world: the dominance of
Microsoft’s Windows operating system
meant that as more people used
Microsoft’s programmes, the need for
compatibility across programmes and
between users made Windows both the
natural choice for new users and then
kept them locked in because it did not
pay for users to switch.
This does not mean that it is game
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