An Opportunity for Africa? Gerald Davis writing in Network for Business Sustainability:
...New production technologies and radical declines in their cost mean that in years to come we will have local, on-demand production of goods ranging from prosthetic limbs to auto parts to phones.
The environmental benefits are obvious. In a decade or two, we may look back with horror on a generation of North Americans that expected to buy bell peppers flown in from Holland, wine shipped from Chile, and phones and electronic goods from China.
But the threats to businesses are also obvious. Locavore production will be highly disruptive to existing businesses. Consider how the music and publishing industries have been completely re-made by the Web, and how education and health care will be re-organized as the mobile internet renders their traditional models obsolete.
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