Gabby Press - Tom Vass

We will post articles, press releases and event information here. Please check back often to get your daily GABBY News.

Raleigh, N.C. The Technology Stock Advisor, an online newsletter investment advisor with a patented stock selection methodology for picking technology stocks, added three new stocks to the newsletter’s watch list today.

Searching For Innovation, part II

by Thomas E. Vass

Editor's Note: This is the second part of the article, “Searching For Innovation,” which appeared in the April issue's Finance Department.

In the first part of “Searching For Innovation,” three new forms of competition for innovation were outlined: competition between global corporations; the competition between venture capitalists and global corporations; and competition between metro regions.

All the competitors share a common goal for a greater birth rate of high-tech new ventures, and all have financial interests that conflict, if the new venture creation process is seen as a “zero-sum” market.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Apr 28, 2008 – Washington, D. C. The Capital Formation Institute, (CFI), a Washington DC-based economic research and advocacy group for innovation economics, sponsored its second national roundtable discussion of innovation tools to drive community economic development on April 22, 2008.

National Innovation Experts to Lead Economic Roundtable on Innovation Economics

Capital Formation Institute Sponsoring Second National Dialogue on American Economy April 22, 2008.

Raleigh, NC, April 19, 2008 --(PR.com)-- The Capital Formation Institute, a Washington DC-based economic research and advocacy group for innovation economics, announced today the line up of experts who will lead the April 22, 2008, national roundtable discussion on innovation tools to drive community economic development.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, a steamship and railroad builder, used to say that he never knew where a good idea would come from, and therefore he was always open to listening to anyone who had a new thought. Large corporations are confronted with the same problem raised by Vanderbilt: Where do good ideas for their next generation of products come from?

As a result of more open global trading policies the basis of global competition has shifted from low-cost production to the ability of firms to innovate rapidly. But, the idea of innovating rapidly presumes that corporations know where to look to find good ideas that can be commercialized.

Raleigh, N.C., USA (SANEPR.com) April 11, 2008 -- The long-term economic woes of America were the topic of an April 10, 2008, national roundtable discussion sponsored by the Capital Formation Institute, an advocacy think-tank for innovation economics based in Virginia.
Thomas Vass, an innovation economic expert, located in Raleigh, N. C., was selected by CFI to act as one of the two moderators to lead the discussion for the national teleconference.
“America’s economic problems extend way beyond a mortgage debt crisis or the malaise in the entire credit market,” said Tom Vass. “America’s economic problems are structural and the genesis of the problems are poor economic leadership in the private financial and business networks. These are not problems that can be solved by politicians in Washington or state capitals.”

Predicting Technology: Identifying Future Market Opportunities and Disruptive Technologies, by Thomas E. Vass, The Great American Business & Economics Press, Inc. www.gabby-press.com

Certain types of technological innovation cause new future markets to be created, which disrupt existing markets and the status quo distribution of income in metropolitan economic regions. Other forms of technological innovation act to sustain existing markets and to perpetuate existing distributions of both incomes and political power.

A new book that explains the difference between the two types of innovation has been written by Thomas E. Vass, a regional economist based in the Research Triangle of North Carolina.

Vass modifies the work of Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard University, and author of books on technology, by adding a biological evolutionary metaphor to explain how technology evolves in metropolitan economic regions.

“Christensen’s work on disruptive technologies is primarily focused on how large multinational corporations respond to technological change,” said Vass. “I wanted to extend his work by adding a geographical and biological dimension to existing theory.”

The new theory described by Vass is called SERET, short for Structural Evolutionary Regional Economic Theory. SERET explains two forms of technological innovation, the very slow evolutionary process called “asexual” evolution, and the more dynamic and rare evolutionary event called technological crossover, when technology from two parent technologies is combined.

“My description of asexual evolution is similar to what Christensen calls “sustaining innovations,” said Vass. “One of the major differences between his work and mine is the ability of my theory to predict the formation of entirely new future markets and future streams of income.”

“Christensen tends to emphasize price competition as a causal factor in technological innovation, while my theory tends to emphasize the competition of income as the most important variable for explaining innovation,” said Vass.

Vass explains that technological evolution occurs in geographically bounded regions, based upon social and business networks that exist in each region. The type of regional technological evolution in each region is unique to the specific region and related to cultural values, the rule of law and social institutions that support market transactions.

Industries from different technological traditions share ideas about technological issues. The sharing of ideas either leads to asexual technological evolution, which modifies existing technology and products, or it leads, in very rare cases, to sexual technological evolution, where technology from two distinct parent technologies is crossed.

Engineers, scientists and product developers trying to explain where and how fast technological obsolescence may affect their existing products will benefit from the insights provided in the new theory. In addition, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, bankers, and inventors trying to come up with new investment opportunities will have a better model to make decisions. By extending Christensen’s work, corporate executives and marketing agents will have a better analytical framework for understanding market developments in the five to ten year time horizon.

Vass has presented elements of his new theory twice in the past five years to members of the Western Regional Science Association. “In both presentations, the members of this international economics organization seemed to appreciate the combination of biological and economic theory,” said Vass.

About Thomas Vass: Vass is an author of books on economics, technology, investment methods and democratic populism. He holds an intellectual business method patent for investment portfolio management, and operates an online investment management company called myownfund.com. He lives in the Swift Creek community of Wake County, in North Carolina.

Welcome to the GABBY Newsroom