Successful failure: The marketisation of failure in an entrepreneurial economy

2021 ◽  
pp. 146954052110139
Author(s):  
Collin Chua
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Market Conditions ◽  
Workforce Participation ◽  
New Markets ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Event Series ◽  
Global Movement ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
Bear Witness

In our era of late capitalism, we can bear witness to the ongoing creative fashioning of successful failure into a commodity which has grown in value. This article discusses two topics: firstly, attitudes towards and narratives of failure in the entrepreneurial start-up space; and secondly, how ‘successful failure’ is increasingly becoming marketised beyond the entrepreneurial start-up space, as people face the escalating power of an injunction to ‘learn from failure’, and are expected to perform accordingly, as we now live within what has been described as an entrepreneurial economy. The example that initiated this line of research has been the phenomenon of ‘Fuckup Night’ events: ‘Fuckup Nights is a global movement and event series that shares stories of professional failure. Each month, in events across the globe, we get three to four people to get up in front of a room full of strangers to share their own professional fuckup. The stories of the business that crashes and burns, the partnership deal that goes sour and the product that has to be recalled, we tell them all’. In essence, the message is as follows: ‘Yes, you should tell everyone about your failures, as the path you have trod on the route to success’. The marketisation of triumphalist narratives of failure illustrates the rise of a new ‘ideology that justifies engagement in capitalism’, calling for ‘workforce participation’ in a new way (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007 The New Spirit of Capitalism. London and New York: Verso: 8). This article examines and theorises the commoditisation of successful failure: how certain kinds of failure have been packaged and produced for impact, how – properly packaged – successful failure has become a profitable and lucrative asset and how new markets now thrive around these newly commodified narratives of failure. The article explores the context for the emergence of appropriate market conditions for the production, circulation and consumption of ‘successful failure’ as commodity.

scholarly journals Building a high-technology product out of India: The Intelli-Fi way

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Varadharajan Sridhar
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
High Technology ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Wifi Networks ◽  
Technology Sector ◽  
Technology Products ◽  
Start Up ◽  
The World ◽  
World Class ◽  
Technology Product

There has been a constant debate over the last decade as to whether the Indian information technology sector should continue to be driven by services revenue or should the firms actively pursue in building high-technology products. Dr Prashant Joshi, former lead researcher at AT&T Research and IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Centre, New York, while returning to India in 2002, conceptualized that someday, the world would witness massive deployment of WiFi networks and that these networks require active 24 × 7 management. He incubated his start-up in Bangalore, India, with a vision to build a WiFi secure management product suite for global markets. The case outlines the evolution of Intelli-Fi networks from a humble beginning to a strong network management firm with installed base all around the world. The case highlights the technical and managerial challenges of the firm and its entrepreneur founder in building a world class product.

Finding a home for Australian LNG in developing power markets

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 605
Author(s):  
Craig Henderson ◽  
David Miller
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Liquefied Natural Gas ◽  
Power Markets ◽  
Energy Market ◽  
Market Conditions ◽  
New Markets ◽  
Developing Markets ◽  
Market Trends ◽  
Fuel Source

Recent energy market trends have opened the opportunity to exploit Australian liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a cost-competitive fuel source for power projects in developing markets. Regrettably, having favourable market conditions does not automatically lend itself to projects getting sanctioned and being successful. It is fair to say that the number of projects up and running in the current market is less than expected. This paper aims to explore some of the key reasons why LNG to power projects fail to become a reality and what Australian LNG producers could do to achieve their ambition of creating new markets to sell their LNG into. The paper concludes by outlining several development approaches that are being used in industry and how Australian LNG suppliers can partake in these approaches by standing out from the crowd, framing the opportunity, aligning agreements to the capability of the technology and understanding scale and industrial ecologies.

Fracking and Labor Market Conditions: A Comparison of Pennsylvania and New York Border Counties

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 649-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Hastings ◽  
Lauren R Heller ◽  
E Frank Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Market Conditions ◽  
Labor Market Conditions

Start-up urbanism: New York, Rio de Janeiro and the global urbanization of technology-based economies

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 999-1018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ugo Rossi ◽  
Arturo Di Bella
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Community Cooperation ◽  
Communicative Capitalism

This article investigates the variegated urbanization of technology-based economies through the lenses of a comparative analysis looking at New York City and Rio de Janeiro. Over the last decade, the former has gained a reputation as a ‘model tech city’ at the global level, while the latter is an example of emerging ‘start-up city’. Using a Marxist-Foucauldian approach, the article argues that, while technopoles in the 1980s and the 1990s arose from the late Keynesian state, the globally hegemonic phenomenon of start-up urbanism is illustrative of an increasingly decentralized neoliberal project of self-governing ‘enterprise society’, mobilizing ideas of community, cooperation and horizontality within a context of cognitive-communicative capitalism in which urban environments acquire renewed centrality. In doing so, the article underlines start-up urbanism’s key contribution to the reinvention of the culture of global capitalism in times of perceived economic shrinkage worldwide and the central role played by major metropolitan centres in this respect.

scholarly journals On the Distributional Outcomes of Policy-Induced Entrepreneurial Opportunities

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hal Wesley Snarr ◽  
Dan Friesner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Manufacturing Firms ◽  
The State ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Start Up ◽  
New Business ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Publicly Supported ◽  
Start Ups ◽  
Positive Effect

This analysis empirically evaluates the effectiveness of entrepreneurial policies using the number and distribution of firms as outcome variables.  The analysis occurs within the context of a natural experiment: the START-UP NY program. Implemented in 2014, START-UP NY created enterprise development zones adjacent to publicly supported universities (i.e., SUNY and CUNY campuses) within the state. New business start-ups operating within these zones, and within a specific set of technology and health-related industries received tax incentives that substantially lowered tax rates for a 5-10 year period. In 2016, the State of New York substantially altered its corporate tax structure; a policy initiative affecting firms, business owners, and households in the state simultaneously, and may also induce entrepreneurship. The results suggest that START-UP NY had a positive effect on the growth of New York's micro and small-sized firms operating in professional, scientific, and technical industries. START-UP NY also negatively affected micro-sized manufacturing firms, while positively affecting small manufacturing firms. The latter finding suggests that START-UP NY is effective in incubating micro-sized manufacturing firms that eventually grow into small manufacturing firms.

The trajectory of linked data in late capitalism

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Radio ◽  
James Kalwara
Keyword(s):  
Linked Data ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
Library Technology

PurposeThe aim of this article is to analyze the trajectory of library linked data in light of the ideological machinations of late capitalism. This is accomplished in order to understand how and why its development currently occupies a place of contradiction and provide avenues for examining how this tension can be resolved.Design/methodology/approachOur approach relies on the work of Boltanski and Chiapello's “new spirit of capitalism” to understand the rise of the network and situate linked data within that history by examining various technologies, projects and agents involved in its development. We use this history to outline the growth of contradictory tensions within linked data necessitated by capitalistic growth.FindingsLibrary linked data has found itself in a contradictory position because of the nature of late capitalist expansion, but this development has been facilitated largely by hegemonic agents within libraries and related institutions. We suggest that a counter-hegemonic lens be applied to envisioning linked data's future and its infrastructures.Originality/valueTo our knowledge this article represents one of the first attempts to provide a critique of late capitalist designs on linked data with a particular emphasis on hegemonic control over library technology and infrastructures.

Class, Race, and Marginality

2021 ◽  
pp. 134-150
Author(s):  
Katie Beswick
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Political System ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Men Of Color ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Geographical Locations

This chapter considers how class and race are navigated through informal performances by marginalized subjects in New York City and London. Taking litefeet dance and grime music as objects of analysis (both performance forms developed and pioneered by working-class men of color), it argues that we can think of informal and ostensibly frivolous practices as importantly political, structuring our understanding of cities and contributing to social and cultural change compelled by injustices in the political system of late capitalism. The chapter posits space as a means of understanding the politics of global cities and the connections between different geographical locations. Drawing on ethnographic and observation work undertaken by the author between 2014 and 2020, it uses hip-hop practices taking place in different contexts as a way of exploring how those who are relegated to the city’s edges find ways to survive and to push back against the dominant order. The argument here acknowledges the impossibility for marginalized performance forms to bring about total structural change but delineates ways that informal practices might nonetheless participate in a politics (understood as a struggle over power) and contribute to processes of change, which may not be inherently radical but are nonetheless resistant.

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