Making things (better): industry still matters

'...in the last thirty years American businesses have shifted their focus from the production of goods (now done elsewhere) to the projection of brands, that is, states of mind in the consumer, and this shift finds its correlate in the production of mentalities in workers. Process becomes more important than product, and is to be optimized through management techniques...'
( Matthew B. Crawford, Shop class as soulcraft, an inquiry into the value of work)

'Invisible hand;
Mother of inflated hope'
Mistress of despair!'
(Haiku on neoclassical economics by Stephen T. Ziliak)

'Europe has become the greater Switzerland of the 21st century: comfortable, complacent and unwilling to venture abroad.'
(Philip Stevens, Europe in the slow lane)

Making things (better): industry still matters

Paul Drewe 


Recently, a growing number of publications focuses on the importance of industry, read manufacturing. This is influenced by the economic crisis and by the success of newcomers like China and India (see e.g. Le Monde, 2011). Without industry, it seems difficult to create jobs, produce economic growth or maintain one's position as an economic power.