Distributed economy

Distributed economies (DE) is a term that was coined by Allan Johansson et al. in 2005.^[1]

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

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. 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) are becoming cheaper.^[2] The DE concept works well with the development of fab labs.

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^[3] and consumer products are interesting candidates.

See also

• Decentralized planning (economics)
• Distributism
• Long tail
• Open-design movement
• Slow design

References

External links

• DeLabs - Learning Labs for Distributed Economies
• DE at The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University, Sweden^{[permanent dead link]}