[M.R.Victor]

The 3rd industrial revolution is a concept currently championed by US economist Jeremy Rifkin which is apparently gaining a fair bit of traction in France, Germany and China.

This primary thesis is that the world economy is heading away from large, vertically integrated industrial systems and towards de-centralized production, with marginal costs tending ever closer to 0 (Incipient examples being various forms of the sharing economy, such as Uber, AirBnb, etc).

Here are 2 of his presentations on the subject.

I'm wondering how Toronto specifically and Canada in general are positioned, in your opinion, to meet and take advantage of these incipient economic trends. Are the current debates about resource extraction in Saskatchewan and the high price of wind power in Ontario examples of Canada's backwardness in this regard, or are they a sign of things to come? What will Toronto look like if these sort of economic prophecies were to play out to their full extent?

 

[Johnny Au]

There is also crowdfunding projects as well. Inventors could gather funds from random backers interested in the project and they could get funded. If the project is successful well before the end of the campaign, then stretch goals could be added in as well.