Southern Connecticut has been
hammered by the Blizzard of 2013 and the
last weekend has been spent at home at the request of the Connecticut Governor
Dannel Malloy because the roads need to be without any vehicles to help snow
removal by trucks. A friend in Hamden, Connecticut reports that his neighbors
on both sides have their driveways up to 40 inches of snow. This happened because
the contractor who removes snow in his driveway has been requested by the
Hamden Town officials to first help with town streets. And this is the 4th day
of seclusion at home. Luckily there are very few power outages in Connecticut,
unlike the rather beleaguered friends in neighboring Massachusetts.
The intriguing question is that the
Connecticut snow removal community is very comfortable upto 24 inches of
snow while 36-40 inches seems to be a completely stressed out situation for all
concerned. On the other hand the snow removal community in Massachusetts are
more confident in dealing with the 36-40" snow. By the same logic towns in
warm Texas are highly alarmed with just one inch of snow!
So
the question arises what has this got to do with the Knowledge
Economy? Well, let me explain what exactly happened on our driveway yesterday.
We had a car completely buried in snow that took several hours to dig out (see
photo alongside). A nice neighbor came in with his snow blower and at about 8
pm, kindly removed the snow behind this car. Our harassed snow removal contractor
arrived finally at 9.30 pm and called me to request to remove the car on the
driveway (pictured with snow behind above). And after I did so, the snow removal truck
reversed itself into the part of ther driveway that was
vacant. This was the first time that the contractor had reversed into
the driveway. An innovation spurred by the 36+ inches of snow and the
opportunity of accessing half the driveway. I wonder if the snow contractor
will be able to adopt this wonderful approach of reversing into the
driveway at lower snowfalls in the future. When someone pushes snow toward your
lawn… it gets damaged so reversing and pushing the snow outwards seems like a
better idea. It seems innovative when there is an emergency of 36+ inches of snow.
The Boeing 787 is still grounded
because of batteries that get hot and are alleged to have caught fire. Right
from the start the batteries have been outsourced. In doing so the knowledge
associated with lithium batteries does not exist in-house at Boeing. Reasons
that the whole issue is still unresolved are because:
- Boeing folks perhaps do not understand the battery
situation because they were never involved in the manufacture. - Just as a snow removal specialist in Texas finds
1" snow a challenge, the Connecticut snow removal person finds 36
" snow removal daunting. On the other hand the Boston snow removal
entrepreneur seems far more relaxed, despite the significant power
shortages.
To the
credit of the intrepid snow removers of Connecticut, by the time Sunday evening
arrived… they had figured out that it is really effective to reverse into the
driveway if there is a lot of snow to move around. This knowledge accumulation
over the day on Sunday is an aspect of the knowledge economy that we don't
realize. It's knowledge that you gather when you do it…. pretty much like the
Boeing batteries ….if you make them. Contact StratoServe.