Companies seem conservative today, but just watch when they reach the profitable tipping point
Until he lost his shirt in the Dirty Thirties, a relative of mine was an influential businessman in southern Saskatchewan. Among his interests was a livery stable, with a blacksmith, harnesses, buggy whips and everything you needed to keep horses on the road and in the field.
Horses are still with us, of course, but today it is hard to realize what an enormous industry they supported only a hundred years ago.
As skeptics scoff about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s grudging concession on the G7 agreement to end the use of fossil fuels, I think it is useful to remember how quickly businesses can completely transform an economy once they get the bit between their teeth.
“If we can get companies putting their innovative genius to work on solving environmental problems, we’re going to find solutions that we can’t even imagine today,” says Stewart Elgie, a professor of law and economics at the University of Ottawa.
He is confident that when it comes to fighting climate change, business will pull its share of the load. But we have to get over a hump.
Horse sense
A hundred years ago, the saddlery and harness business had its own industrial journals, well worth perusing. United States Leather, making a product essential to harnesses, was one of the 12 founding companies in the Dow Jones Index.
An inspection of one of world’s biggest monthly harness trade magazines, produced in Walsall, England — a world hub of harness and saddle making — shows that to a large extent, the industry did not see the end coming.
“Whilst some commentators (quite correctly) predicted disaster for the saddlery and harness trade,” says a commentary published by Walsall Council, “others were more complacent, dismissing the motor car as an unreliable and expensive plaything which would never catch on.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
