Cities are the crucible of civilization. They have been expanding, urbanization has been expanding, at an exponential rate in the last 200 years so that by the second part of this century, the planet will be completely dominated by cities. Cities are the origins of global warming, impact on the environment, health, pollution, disease, finance, economies, energy -- they're all problems that are confronted by having cities. That's where all these problems come from. And the tsunami of problems that we feel we're facing in terms of sustainability questions are actually a reflection of the exponential increase in urbanization across the planet.
Gradovi su veliki izazov za civilizaciju. Oni se uvećavaju, stopa urbanizacije raste eksponencijalnom stopom u poslednjih 200 godina tako da će u drugoj polovini ovog veka gradovi u potpunosti dominirati planetom. Gradovi su izvor globalnog zagrevanja, utiču na okruženje, zdravlje, zagađenje, bolesti, finansije, ekonomiju, energiju. Svi ovi problemi su posledica postojanja gradova. To je izvor svih ovih problema. A vrhunac problema sa kojima se suočavamo, po pitanju održivosti, ogleda se u eksponencijalnom povećanju stope urbanizacije širom planete.
Here's some numbers. Two hundred years ago, the United States was less than a few percent urbanized. It's now more than 82 percent. The planet has crossed the halfway mark a few years ago. China's building 300 new cities in the next 20 years. Now listen to this: Every week for the foreseeable future, until 2050, every week more than a million people are being added to our cities. This is going to affect everything. Everybody in this room, if you stay alive, is going to be affected by what's happening in cities in this extraordinary phenomenon. However, cities, despite having this negative aspect to them, are also the solution. Because cities are the vacuum cleaners and the magnets that have sucked up creative people, creating ideas, innovation, wealth and so on. So we have this kind of dual nature. And so there's an urgent need for a scientific theory of cities.
Pogledajmo neke brojeve: pre dve stotine godina, stopa urbanizacije u SAD je iznosila manje od nekoliko procenata. Sada je stopa urbanizacije veća od 82%. Globalno posmatrano, pre nekoliko godina ta stopa je prešla 50%. U Kini će u narednih 20 godina biti izgrađeno 300 novih gradova. Obratite pažnju sada na ovo: u bliskoj budućnosti do 2050. godine, populacija u našim gradovima će se svake nedelje povećavati za milion stanovnika. To će uticati na sve. Svako od vas, u ovoj sobi, ako bude živ, biće pogođen ovim neverovatnim fenomenom, koji se odvija u gradovima. Međutim i pored tih negativnih aspekata gradova, gradovi su takođe i rešenje. Gradovi su magneti i usisivači koji privlače kreativne ljude, kreatore ideja, inovacija bogatstva i tako dalje. Dakle imamo dve strane medalje. Neophodno je ubrzo doći do naučne teorije o gradovima.
Now these are my comrades in arms. This work has been done with an extraordinary group of people, and they've done all the work, and I'm the great bullshitter that tries to bring it all together.
Ovo su moja braća po oružju. Izvanredna grupa ljudi je odradila ovaj posao, uradili su sav posao, a ja sam veliki seronja koji pokušava da sve to objedini.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
So here's the problem: This is what we all want. The 10 billion people on the planet in 2050 want to live in places like this, having things like this, doing things like this, with economies that are growing like this, not realizing that entropy produces things like this, this, this and this. And the question is: Is that what Edinburgh and London and New York are going to look like in 2050, or is it going to be this? That's the question. I must say, many of the indicators look like this is what it's going to look like, but let's talk about it.
Dakle, problem je u sledećem: Ovo je ono što svi želimo. Na planeti će 2050. biti 10 milijardi ljudi koji žele da žive u ovakvim mestima, da imaju ove stvari, da rade ovakve stvari, sa ekonomijom koja ovako raste, ne shvatajući da ta entropija proizvodi i ovakve stvari, ovo, ovo i ovo. Pitanje je: Da li će Edinburg, London i Njujork izgledati ovako 2050. godine ili će biti ovakvi? To je pitanje. Moram priznati da mnogi pokazatelji upućuju na to da će oni izgledati ovako, ali popričajmo o tome.
So my provocative statement is that we desperately need a serious scientific theory of cities. And scientific theory means quantifiable -- relying on underlying generic principles that can be made into a predictive framework. That's the quest. Is that conceivable? Are there universal laws? So here's two questions that I have in my head when I think about this problem. The first is: Are cities part of biology? Is London a great big whale? Is Edinburgh a horse? Is Microsoft a great big anthill? What do we learn from that? We use them metaphorically -- the DNA of a company, the metabolism of a city, and so on -- is that just bullshit, metaphorical bullshit, or is there serious substance to it? And if that is the case, how come that it's very hard to kill a city? You could drop an atom bomb on a city, and 30 years later it's surviving. Very few cities fail. All companies die, all companies. And if you have a serious theory, you should be able to predict when Google is going to go bust.
Dakle, moje provokativno shvatanje ukazuje da nam je preko potrebna ozbiljna naučna teorija o gradovima. Naučna teorija podrazumeva kvantitet - oslanjanje na opšteprihvaćene principe koji se mogu uspostaviti u predvidivom okviru. To je potraga. Da li je dostižno? Da li postoje univerzalni zakoni? Javljaju se dva pitanja kada razmišljam o ovom problemu. Prvo je: da li su gradovi deo biologije? Da li je London veliki kit? Da li je Edinburg konj? Da li je Majkrosoft veliki mravinjak? Šta možemo da naučimo iz toga? Koristimo ih kao metaforu - DNK neke kompanije, metabolizam grada, i tako dalje -- da li je to samo sranje, metaforičko sranje, ili u tome ima istine? Ako je to tačno, zašto je veoma teško uništiti grad? Možete baciti atomsku bombu na grad, a 30 godina kasnije on i dalje preživljava. Malo je gradova koji su propali. Sve kompanije umiru, sve kompanije. Ako imate ozbiljnu teoriju, onda bi mogli da predvidite. kada će Gugl propasti.
So is that just another version of this? Well we understand this very well. That is, you ask any generic question about this -- how many trees of a given size, how many branches of a given size does a tree have, how many leaves, what is the energy flowing through each branch, what is the size of the canopy, what is its growth, what is its mortality? We have a mathematical framework based on generic universal principles that can answer those questions. And the idea is can we do the same for this? So the route in is recognizing one of the most extraordinary things about life, is that it is scalable, it works over an extraordinary range. This is just a tiny range actually: It's us mammals; we're one of these. The same principles, the same dynamics, the same organization is at work in all of these, including us, and it can scale over a range of 100 million in size. And that is one of the main reasons life is so resilient and robust -- scalability. We're going to discuss that in a moment more.
Dakle, da li je to samo još jedna verzija ovoga. Mi ovo dobro razumemo. Odnosno, možete postaviti bilo koje pitanje o ovome - koliko stabala određene veličine, koliko grana određene veličine, ima jedno drvo, koliko listova, koja energija protiče kroz svaku granu, kolika je veličina krošnje, kolika je stopa rasta, kolika stopa smrtnosti? Imamo matematički okvir baziran na osnovnim univerzalnim principima koji može da odgovori na ova pitanja. A ideja je, da li možemo da uradimo isto i za ovo? Dakle, ide se ka prepoznavanju jedne od najfenomenalnijih stvari o životu, a to je da je merljiv, a skala se kreće u izuzetnom rasponu. Ovo je jedan od malih raspona: to smo mi, sisari, mi smo jedni od njih. Isti principi, ista dinamika, ista organizacija je u svemu uključujući i nas, i može se primeniti na rasponu od 100 miliona veličina. Ovo je jedan od glavnih razloga zašto je život tako otporan i robustan - skaliranje. To ću ubrzo predstaviti.
But you know, at a local level, you scale; everybody in this room is scaled. That's called growth. Here's how you grew. Rat, that's a rat -- could have been you. We're all pretty much the same. And you see, you're very familiar with this. You grow very quickly and then you stop. And that line there is a prediction from the same theory, based on the same principles, that describes that forest. And here it is for the growth of a rat, and those points on there are data points. This is just the weight versus the age. And you see, it stops growing. Very, very good for biology -- also one of the reasons for its great resilience. Very, very bad for economies and companies and cities in our present paradigm. This is what we believe. This is what our whole economy is thrusting upon us, particularly illustrated in that left-hand corner: hockey sticks. This is a bunch of software companies -- and what it is is their revenue versus their age -- all zooming away, and everybody making millions and billions of dollars.
Ali, znate, lokalno gledano, vi skalirate, svi u ovoj sobi su skalirani. To se zove rast. Evo koliko ste porasli. Pacov, ovo je pacov - mogli ste biti vi. Mi smo svi prilično jednaki. Vidite, svi ste upoznati sa ovim. Rastete veoma brzo, a onda stanete. Ona linija tamo jeste pretpostavka koja je izvedena na osnovu iste teorije, na osnovu istih principa, koji opisuju onu šumu. Ovde je predstavljen rast pacova, a one tačke su specifični podaci. Ovo je odnos težine i starosti. Vidite, prestaje da raste. Veoma dobro za biologiju, takođe jedan od razloga njihove velike otpornosti. Veoma, veoma loše za ekonomiju, kompanije i gradove, u našoj sadašnjoj paradigmi. To je ono u šta verujemo. Na ovome je zasnovana naša čitava ekonomija, posebno prikazana u levom uglu: štapovi za hokej. Ovo je gomila softverskih kompanija, i pokazuje njihove prihode u odnosu na starost - sve se udaljava i svako zarađuje milione i milijarde dolara.
Okay, so how do we understand this? So let's first talk about biology. This is explicitly showing you how things scale, and this is a truly remarkable graph. What is plotted here is metabolic rate -- how much energy you need per day to stay alive -- versus your weight, your mass, for all of us bunch of organisms. And it's plotted in this funny way by going up by factors of 10, otherwise you couldn't get everything on the graph. And what you see if you plot it in this slightly curious way is that everybody lies on the same line. Despite the fact that this is the most complex and diverse system in the universe, there's an extraordinary simplicity being expressed by this. It's particularly astonishing because each one of these organisms, each subsystem, each cell type, each gene, has evolved in its own unique environmental niche with its own unique history. And yet, despite all of that Darwinian evolution and natural selection, they've been constrained to lie on a line.
Dobro, kako mi ovo shvatamo? Sagledajmo prvo biologiju. Ovo vam eksplicitno pokazuje kako se stvari mere i upoređuju, ovo je uistinu izuzetan grafikon. Ovde vidimo metaboličku stopu - koliko vam je energije potrebno za svakodnevni život - prema vašoj težini, vašoj masi, za sve nas, gomilu organizama. Predstvaljen je na ovaj zabavan način, inkrementima koji rastu za 10 jedinica, da je drugačije, ne biste stavili sve na grafikon. Ono što vidite na grafikonu, na ovaj malo neobičan način, jeste da svi prate isti patern. Uprkos tome da se radi o najsloženijem i najrazličitijem sistemu u univerzumu, postoji neverovatna jednostavnost koja je ovime prikazana. Posebno je zadivljujuće jer je svaki od ovih organizama, svaki podsistem, svaki tip ćelije, svaki gen, evoluirao u svojoj jedinstvenoj prirodnoj sredini, sa svojom jedinstvenom istorijom. Ipak, i pored Darvinove teorije evolucije i prirodne selekcije, oni su prinuđeni da leže na istoj liniji.
Something else is going on. Before I talk about that, I've written down at the bottom there the slope of this curve, this straight line. It's three-quarters, roughly, which is less than one -- and we call that sublinear. And here's the point of that. It says that, if it were linear, the steepest slope, then doubling the size you would require double the amount of energy. But it's sublinear, and what that translates into is that, if you double the size of the organism, you actually only need 75 percent more energy. So a wonderful thing about all of biology is that it expresses an extraordinary economy of scale. The bigger you are systematically, according to very well-defined rules, less energy per capita. Now any physiological variable you can think of, any life history event you can think of, if you plot it this way, looks like this. There is an extraordinary regularity. So you tell me the size of a mammal, I can tell you at the 90 percent level everything about it in terms of its physiology, life history, etc.
Ovde se odigrava još nešto. Pre nego što počnem da pričam o tome, zapisao sam na dnu ove krivulje, ovu ravnu liniju. To je otprilike tri četvrtine, grubo, što je manje nego jedan - i to zovemo sublinearnom. Evo i poenta toga. Govori da, ako bi bilo linearno, najstrmiji nagib, da bi udvostručili veličinu, trebalo bi vam dupla količina energije. Ali kako je sublinearna, to znači da ako duplirate veličinu organizma, vama treba 75 procenata energije više. Dakle, divna stvar u biologiji je postojanje ekonomičnosti veličine. Što ste sistemski veći, u skladu sa dobro definisanim pravilima, treba vam manje energije po glavi. Bilo koja fiziološka varijabla koje se možete setiti, bilo koji istorijski događaj kog se možete setiti, ako ga predstavite na ovaj način, izgledaće ovako. Postoji izvanredna pravilnost. Dakle, kažete mi veličinu sisara, a ja vam, sa tačnošću od 90%, mogu reći sve o njemu o fiziologiji, životnoj istoriji i sl.
And the reason for this is because of networks. All of life is controlled by networks -- from the intracellular through the multicellular through the ecosystem level. And you're very familiar with these networks. That's a little thing that lives inside an elephant. And here's the summary of what I'm saying. If you take those networks, this idea of networks, and you apply universal principles, mathematizable, universal principles, all of these scalings and all of these constraints follow, including the description of the forest, the description of your circulatory system, the description within cells. One of the things I did not stress in that introduction was that, systematically, the pace of life decreases as you get bigger. Heart rates are slower; you live longer; diffusion of oxygen and resources across membranes is slower, etc.
Razlog tome je mreža. Sav život je kontrolisan od strane mreža - od unutarćelijskih preko višećelijskih preko nivoa ekosistema. Vi dobro poznajete ove mreže. To je mala stvar koja živi unutar jednog slona. A ovde je rezime svega što govorim. Ako uzmete ove mreže, ovu ideju o mreži, i primenite univerzalne principe, matematičke, univerzalne principe sva ta skaliranja i sva ta ograničenja koja prate, uključujući opis šume, opis vašeg sistema cirkulacije, opis unutar ćelija. Jedna od stvari koje nisam dovoljno naglasio u uvodu, jeste da, sistematski, brzina života opada kako vi postajete veći. Otkucaji srca su sporiji, vi živite duže, razmena kiseonika i resurasa preko membrana je sporija itd.
The question is: Is any of this true for cities and companies? So is London a scaled up Birmingham, which is a scaled up Brighton, etc., etc.? Is New York a scaled up San Francisco, which is a scaled up Santa Fe? Don't know. We will discuss that. But they are networks, and the most important network of cities is you. Cities are just a physical manifestation of your interactions, our interactions, and the clustering and grouping of individuals. Here's just a symbolic picture of that. And here's scaling of cities. This shows that in this very simple example, which happens to be a mundane example of number of petrol stations as a function of size -- plotted in the same way as the biology -- you see exactly the same kind of thing.
Pitanje je: Da li se išta od ovoga može primeniti na gradove i kompanije? Dakle, da li je London uveličani Birmingem, koji je uveličani Brajton itd? Da li je Njujork uveličani San Francisko, koji je uveličani Santa Fe? Ne znam. O tome ćemo raspravljati. Ali oni su mreže, a najvažnija mreža grada jeste vi. Gradovi su samo fizička manifestacija vaših interakcija, naših interakcija, i grupisanja i povezivanja pojedinaca. Ovo je samo simbolična slika toga. Ovo je skaliranje gradova. Pokazuje da ovaj jednostavan primer, koji je ujedno i običan primer broja benzinskih pumpi predstvaljen kao funkcija veličine - predstavljen na isti način kao i u biologiji - pokazuje istu stvar.
There is a scaling. That is that the number of petrol stations in the city is now given to you when you tell me its size. The slope of that is less than linear. There is an economy of scale. Less petrol stations per capita the bigger you are -- not surprising. But here's what's surprising. It scales in the same way everywhere. This is just European countries, but you do it in Japan or China or Colombia, always the same with the same kind of economy of scale to the same degree. And any infrastructure you look at -- whether it's the length of roads, length of electrical lines -- anything you look at has the same economy of scale scaling in the same way. It's an integrated system that has evolved despite all the planning and so on. But even more surprising is if you look at socio-economic quantities, quantities that have no analog in biology, that have evolved when we started forming communities eight to 10,000 years ago. The top one is wages as a function of size plotted in the same way. And the bottom one is you lot -- super-creatives plotted in the same way. And what you see is a scaling phenomenon. But most important in this, the exponent, the analog to that three-quarters for the metabolic rate, is bigger than one -- it's about 1.15 to 1.2. Here it is, which says that the bigger you are the more you have per capita, unlike biology -- higher wages, more super-creative people per capita as you get bigger, more patents per capita, more crime per capita.
Merljivo je i uporedivo. Broj benzinskih pumpi u gradu vam je sada predstavljen u funkciji veličine grada. Nagib nije linearan. Prisutna je ekonomija obima. Što je manje benzinskih pumpi po glavi, vi ste veći - nije iznenađujuće. Ali evo iznenađenja. Skaliranje je svuda identično. Ovu su samo evropske zemlje, ali ako uradite to u Japanu, Kini ili Kolumbiji dobijete isti rezultat, sa istim pravilima ekonomičnosti veličine istog stepena. Svaka infrastruktura koju pogledate - bilo da je dužina puta, dužina električnih vodova - sve što pogledate pokazuje istu ekonomičnost, izraženu na isti način. To je integrisani sistem koji je evoluirao i pored svih planiranja i slično. Ali ono što još više iznenađuje jeste analiza socio-ekonomskih pokazatelja, veličine koje nemaju pandam u biologiji, koje su evoluirale kada smo formirali zajednice pre 8 do 10.000 godina. Ono na vrhu su zarade predstavljene u funkciji veličine, dakle na isti način. A na dnu ste vi - super-kreativni predstavljeni na isti način. Ono što vidite jeste fenomen skaliranja. Ali najvažniji je eksponent, primenjiv na te tri četvrtine za metaboličku stopu, je veći od jedan - on je oko 1,15 do 1,2. Tu je, pokazuje da što ste veći više imate po glavi stanovnika, za razliku od biologije - veće plate, više kreativnih ljudi po glavi stanovnika- što ste veći, više patenata po glavi stanovnika, više kriminala po glavi stanovnika.
And we've looked at everything: more AIDS cases, flu, etc. And here, they're all plotted together. Just to show you what we plotted, here is income, GDP -- GDP of the city -- crime and patents all on one graph. And you can see, they all follow the same line. And here's the statement. If you double the size of a city from 100,000 to 200,000, from a million to two million, 10 to 20 million, it doesn't matter, then systematically you get a 15 percent increase in wages, wealth, number of AIDS cases, number of police, anything you can think of. It goes up by 15 percent, and you have a 15 percent savings on the infrastructure. This, no doubt, is the reason why a million people a week are gathering in cities. Because they think that all those wonderful things -- like creative people, wealth, income -- is what attracts them, forgetting about the ugly and the bad.
Mi smo analizirali sve: više slučajeva SIDA-e, gripa i sl. A ovde su oni predstavljeni zajedno. Samo da vam pokažem šta smo predstavili, ovde je prihod, BDP - BDP grada - kriminal i patenti na jednom grafikonu. Možete videti, oni prate jednu istu liniju. Evo i izjave. Ako udvostručite veličinu grada sa 100.000 na 200.000, sa milion na dva miliona, 10 na 20 miliona nije bitno, onda sistematski dobijate povećanje od 15 procenata u platama, bogatstvu, obolelih od SIDA-e, broju policajaca, svega što možete da zamislite. Sve poraste za 15%, i imate 15% uštedu na infrastrukturi. To je, nema sumnje, razlog zašto milion ljudi svake nedelje dolazi u gradove. Zato što misle da su sve te divne stvari - kreativni ljudi, bogatstvo, prihod, ono što ih privlači, a zaboravljaju na ružnu i lošu stranu.
What is the reason for this? Well I don't have time to tell you about all the mathematics, but underlying this is the social networks, because this is a universal phenomenon. This 15 percent rule is true no matter where you are on the planet -- Japan, Chile, Portugal, Scotland, doesn't matter. Always, all the data shows it's the same, despite the fact that these cities have evolved independently. Something universal is going on. The universality, to repeat, is us -- that we are the city. And it is our interactions and the clustering of those interactions. So there it is, I've said it again. So if it is those networks and their mathematical structure, unlike biology, which had sublinear scaling, economies of scale, you had the slowing of the pace of life as you get bigger. If it's social networks with super-linear scaling -- more per capita -- then the theory says that you increase the pace of life. The bigger you are, life gets faster. On the left is the heart rate showing biology. On the right is the speed of walking in a bunch of European cities, showing that increase.
Šta je razlog tome? Nemam vremena da vam pričam detaljno o matematici, ali u osnovi svega je socijalna mreža, jer je ovo univerzalni fenomen. Ovo pravilo od 15 procenata je istinito bez obzira gde ste na planeti - Japan, Čile, Portugal, Škotska, nije bitno. Uvek, svi podaci pokazuju isto, uprkos činjenici da su se ovi gradovi razvijali nezavisno. Nešto univerzalno se dešava. Ta univerzalnost, da ponovim, smo mi - mi smo grad. Naše interakcije i grupisanje ovih interakcija. Dakle, ponavljam se. Ove mreže i njihova matematička osnova, nisu kao biologija, gde vlada sublinearno skaliranje, ili ekonomija obima, pa dolazi do usporavanja tempa života sa rastom. Ako je to društvena mreža, sa super linearnim skaliranjem - više po glavi stanovnika - onda teorija kaže da vi povećavate tempo života. Što ste veći, život postaje brži. Sa leve strane je prikazan srčani ritam koji pokazuje biologiju. Sa desne strane je brzina hoda u velikom broju evropskih gradova, koja pokazuje taj rast.
Lastly, I want to talk about growth. This is what we had in biology, just to repeat. Economies of scale gave rise to this sigmoidal behavior. You grow fast and then stop -- part of our resilience. That would be bad for economies and cities. And indeed, one of the wonderful things about the theory is that if you have super-linear scaling from wealth creation and innovation, then indeed you get, from the same theory, a beautiful rising exponential curve -- lovely. And in fact, if you compare it to data, it fits very well with the development of cities and economies. But it has a terrible catch, and the catch is that this system is destined to collapse. And it's destined to collapse for many reasons -- kind of Malthusian reasons -- that you run out of resources. And how do you avoid that? Well we've done it before.
Na kraju, želim da govorim o rastu. Ovo smo imali u biologiji, samo da ponovim. Ekonomija obima podstiče ovo sigmoidalno ponašanje. Rastete brzo i onda stanete - to je deo naše otpornosti. To bi bilo loše za ekonomiju i gradove. Zaista, jedna od fantastičnih stvari u vezi sa ovom teorijom je da ako imate super-linearno skaliranje od stvaranja bogatstva i inovacija, onda stvarno dobijate, od iste teorije, divnu rastuću eksponencijalnu krivu - prelepo. U stvari, ako je uporedite sa podacima slažu se veoma dobro sa razvojem gradova i ekomonije. Ali postoji užasna začkoljicu, a to je da je ovaj sistem osuđen na propast. Osuđen je iz mnogih razloga - sličnih Maltusovim razlozima - da ćete ostati bez resursa. Kako da izbegnete to? Pa mi smo to već jednom uspeli.
What we do is, as we grow and we approach the collapse, a major innovation takes place and we start over again, and we start over again as we approach the next one, and so on. So there's this continuous cycle of innovation that is necessary in order to sustain growth and avoid collapse. The catch, however, to this is that you have to innovate faster and faster and faster. So the image is that we're not only on a treadmill that's going faster, but we have to change the treadmill faster and faster. We have to accelerate on a continuous basis. And the question is: Can we, as socio-economic beings, avoid a heart attack?
Ono što se dešava je da rastemo i približavamo se tački kolapsa, tada dođemo do velikog izuma, i mi počinjemo iznova ponovo, i počinjemo ispočetka kada se približimo sledećoj i tako dalje. Dakle tu je neprekidan ciklus inoviranja koji je neophodan u cilju održavanja rasta i izbegavanja kolapsa. Začkoljica, je u tome što treba da inoviramo brže i brže i brže. Dakle slika je takva da nismo samo na pokretnoj traci koja se kreće brže već moramo da menjamo trake sve brže i brže. Moramo neprekidno da ubrzavamo. A pitanje je: Možemo li, kao socijalno-ekonomska bića, da izbegnemo srčani udar?
So lastly, I'm going to finish up in this last minute or two asking about companies. See companies, they scale. The top one, in fact, is Walmart on the right. It's the same plot. This happens to be income and assets versus the size of the company as denoted by its number of employees. We could use sales, anything you like. There it is: after some little fluctuations at the beginning, when companies are innovating, they scale beautifully. And we've looked at 23,000 companies in the United States, may I say. And I'm only showing you a little bit of this.
Na kraju, završiću u poslednjoj minuti ili dve pitajući o kompanijama. Vidite kompanije, one se skaliraju. Ona na vrhu je Volmart, sa desne strane. To je isti gafikon. Ovo su prihod i imovina prema veličini kompanije, predstavljeni brojem zaposlenih. Možemo da koristimo prodaju, bilo šta što vam se dopada. Nakon nekih manjih fluktuacija na početku, kada kompanija inovira, ona veoma lepo skalira. Imamo 23.000 kompanija u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama. A pokazujem vam samo mali deo ovoga.
What is astonishing about companies is that they scale sublinearly like biology, indicating that they're dominated, not by super-linear innovation and ideas; they become dominated by economies of scale. In that interpretation, by bureaucracy and administration, and they do it beautifully, may I say. So if you tell me the size of some company, some small company, I could have predicted the size of Walmart. If it has this sublinear scaling, the theory says we should have sigmoidal growth. There's Walmart. Doesn't look very sigmoidal. That's what we like, hockey sticks. But you notice, I've cheated, because I've only gone up to '94. Let's go up to 2008. That red line is from the theory. So if I'd have done this in 1994, I could have predicted what Walmart would be now. And then this is repeated across the entire spectrum of companies. There they are. That's 23,000 companies. They all start looking like hockey sticks, they all bend over, and they all die like you and me.
Ono što je zadivljujuće oko kompanija je da one skaliraju sublinearno kao biologija, pokazujući da njima dominiraju, ne super-linearne inovacije i ideje već dominira ekonomija obima. Prema toj interpretaciji, birokratije i administracije to lepo čine, ako mi dozvolite. Dakle, ako mi kažete veličinu kompanije, neke male kompanije, mogao bih da predvidim veličinu Volmarta. Ako ima ovo sublinearno skaliranje teorija kaže da ćemo imati sigmoidalni rast. Tu je Volmart. Ne izgleda preterano sigmoidalno. To je ono što volimo, štapovi za hokej. Ali primetili ste, ja sam varao jer sam išao samo do '94. Hajdemo do 2008. Crvena linija je iz teorije. Dakle, da sam uradio ovo 1994. mogao bih da predvidim kakav bi Volmart mogao biti sada. Onda se ovo ponavlja kroz čitav spektar kompanija. One su ovde. To je 23.000 kompanija. Sve počinju da liče na štapove za hokej, sve se savijaju, i sve umiru kao vi i ja.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)