How I built a toaster – from scratch

Author: Thomas Thwaites It takes an entire civilisation to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil … It’s frankly amazing he got as far as he got. A...

Porter’s Five Forces

Author: MindTools Porter’s Five Forces is a simple but powerful tool for understanding the competitiveness of your business environment, and for identifying your strategy’s potential profitability. This is useful, because, when you understand the forces in your...

Performative Dynamics in Designerly Economics

Author: Kakee Scott Working as designers and design researchers, we participate in circumstances of economic flux, accepting or resisting economic ideas, models and systems of organisation that come before us, in a dialogue of practice with the changes happening...

The Origin of Wealth

Author: Eric D. Beinhocker In The Origin of Wealth, Eric D. Beinhocker argues that modern science provides a radical perspective on these age-old questions, with far-reaching implications. According to Beinhocker, wealth creation is the product of a simple but...

The recovery needs to be a full-scale economic renewal

Authors: Cliff Taylor and Mariana Mazzucato The Irish Times presents a series of articles on remaking Ireland after the pandemic. As part of this, Prof Mariana Mazzucato of the University College London – a leading international economist and author – answered...