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Finally - Disruptive Innovation in Construction

Otis did a wonderful thing back in the 1850s and sparked the verticalization of cities.  Ever wonder why Paris is such a wonderful feeling city?  It's because most of it was built before there were elevators.  So the practical building was limited to about 5 floors.  And the top floors were the cheeper rent, because you had to huff your groceries up all those stairs.

So here's what lack of true innovation does to an industry... it sets it's sights on just the one single solutions.  That is to make vertical buildings with duplicate floor plans, story after story for 100 or so floors.  And that results in the architectural wonder known as the sky scraper.  Good for little else but setting height records (and then fighting over what to measure at said height - a living floor or a radio antenna).

Wait a few decades (or 8 score in this case) and someone comes up with a disruptive innovation.

Is this it?  The disruptive innovation in buildings that allows architects to think in other dimensions?



MULTI - an elevator that has no rope, and moves horizontal also.

ThyssenKrupp hails its technology called MULTI "as the greatest innovation in the field since Elisha Otis and his demonstration of emergency breaks in 1854."

By-the-way, we do this type of disruptive innovation in the software fields every few years - yet people still compare developing software projects to constructing a sky-scraper.  A joke to prove the point:

For Christmas, the JavaScript community will be bringing out a new framework that you should re-write all your projects in.
Why Roman concrete still stands strong while modern version decays


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