What Kind of Innovation?

I'm all for innovation. There's just something fun, invigorating, about identifying a problem and then trying to find a solution. In the first discussion, we seemed to be touching on the need for innovation. My background isn't philosophy, I was a high school science teacher/engineer, so I'm expecting some correction on terms I use from Scott at least. I enjoy the insight and perspective. The "innovation" I'm working on now is how to address the problem we have using too much energy and too many materials to maintain prosperity (again, Scott's definition). Many innovations have been marketed to us directly or indirectly that were meant to make our lives better. Part of the trick for marketers is to provide us with a picture of prosperity that requires the purchase of their product. When this is done hundreds of times a day, with messages developed by experts aided by focus groups, we're bound to be affected. Unfortunately though, I'm not sure this is the place for the discussion because I see that globalization is one of the interests of Meridian Institute. Am I right in assuming that this means you're looking for ways to do large scale manufacturing that is shipped overseas? And that the innovation is finding a new product or process that is "globally competitive"? I'm having a hard time squaring Scott's comments with that view, but I think I'm correct. Could somebody clear that up?

I'm all for knowledge about what is done globally when that means we can learn better ways of doing things. But it seems like globalization is used to mean developing a manufacturing operation that sells products on a global scale. To me, this means that the region doing the manufacturing is unduly dependent on a temporary manufacturing plant, and that a great deal of upheaval is inevitable when uncontrollable factors result in loss of business. It also means that product is being shipped a great distance unnecessarily. I realize there are special, sparse resources that are traditionally marketed this way for various reasons, but to make this a goal in our manufacturing industry seems like an unnecessary gamble and waste of many resources -not to mention reducing the diversity and richness of the regions. I'm back to distributivism. community