Economics: Just Doing It

On a new form of company:

EndoStim was inspired by Cuban and Indian immigrants to America and funded by St. Louis venture capitalists. Its prototype is being manufactured in Uruguay, with the help of Israeli engineers and constant feedback from doctors in India and Chile. Oh, and the C.E.O. is a South African, who was educated at the Sorbonne, but lives in Missouri and California, and his head office is basically a BlackBerry.

Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine pointed this out in a smart essay in February’s issue, entitled “Atoms Are the New Bits.”

Three guys with laptops used to describe a Web startup, he wrote. Now it describes a hardware company, too thanks to the availability of common platforms, easy-to-use tools, Web-based collaboration, and Internet distribution. ... Global supply chains have become scale-free, able to serve the small as well as the large, the garage inventor and Sony.

See Just Doing It by Thomas L. Friedman, April 17, 2010, and In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits by Chris Anderson, January 25, 2010.