''Distributed economies'' (DE) is a term that was coined by Allan Johansson et al. in 2005.
[Johansson A, Kisch P, Mirata M., 2005]
Distributed economies - A new engine for innovation
. Journal of Cleaner Production 2005;13:971-9
Definition
There is no official definition for DE, but it could be described as a regional approach to promote innovation by small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as
sustainable development
Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The des ...
. The concept is illustrated in the figure below, that shows centralised,
decentralised
Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group.
Conce ...
and distributed economies respectively.
Features
The relations in DE are much more complex than those in a centralised economy. This feature makes the whole economy more stable – leaf nodes no longer rely on just one central node. It also resembles ecological networks, making it a good practical example of
industrial ecology
Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modelled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resource ...
.
A big advantage of DE is that it enables entities within the network to work much more with regional/local natural resources, finances, human capital, knowledge, technology, and so on. It also makes the entities more flexible to respond to the local market needs and thus generating a bigger innovation drive. By doing this, they become a better reflection of their social environment and in that way they can improve quality of life.
The whole concept of DE is not at all a new invention – this is how most pre-industrial economies were organised. However, information technology has opened new doors for the concept: information can be shared much more easily and small-scale production facilities (
rapid prototyping
Rapid prototyping is a group of techniques used to quickly fabricate a scale model of a physical part or assembly using three-dimensional computer aided design (CAD) data.
Construction of the part or assembly is usually done using 3D printin ...
) are becoming cheaper.
The DE concept works well with the development of
fab lab
A fab lab (''fabrication laboratory'') is a small-scale workshop offering (personal) digital fabrication.
A fab lab is typically equipped with an array of flexible computer-controlled tools that cover several different length scales and vari ...
s.
Not all industries are fit for DE; for example, many chemical processes only become economically feasible & efficient on a large scale. On the other hand, bio-energy
[Mirata M.,Nilsson H., Kuisma J., 2005, Production systems aligned with distributed economies: Examples from energy and biomass sectors. Journal of Cleaner Production 13 (10-11), 981-991] and consumer products are interesting candidates.
See also
*
Decentralized planning (economics)
A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, pa ...
*
Distributism
Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated.
Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching prin ...
*
Long tail
In statistics and business, a long tail of some probability distribution, distributions of numbers is the portion of the distribution having many occurrences far from the "head" or central part of the distribution. The distribution could involv ...
*
Open-design movement
The open-design movement involves the development of physical products, machines and systems through use of publicly shared design information. This includes the making of both free and open-source software (FOSS) as well as open-source hardw ...
*
Slow design
The slow movement (sometimes capitalised Slow movement or Slow Movement) advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace. It began with Carlo Petrini's protest against the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome in ...
References
External links
DeLabs - Learning Labs for Distributed EconomiesDE at The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University, Sweden
{{DEFAULTSORT:Distributed Economy
Economic systems