Bloomberg Philanthropies runs a program called Innovation Teams (also called i-teams). It is one of their approaches to driving innovation within cities. What they do is provide grant funds to cities in order to help them assemble a local “i-team”, which they will fund for up to 3 years. 

They, like me, believe that cities are uniquely positioned to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems. So the teams essentially function as in-house (in-city?) innovation consultants, using an approach that relies heavily on research and data.

Here are some of the successes they’ve had so far (excerpt taken from here):

“In New Orleans the i-team helped the city reduce its murder rate by 20% in less than two years. In just sixteen months, Memphis’ i-team leveraged the approach to fill 53% of the empty storefronts in key commercial tracts of the city, giving hope to small business owners and reinvigorating the city’s core. Mayors in pioneer cities successfully deployed their i-teams to decrease homelessness, reduce youth violence, and stimulate economic growth, and these i-teams continue to be re-deployed to solve new and pressing problems.”

Because of these early successes, the program is expanding. Their latest round of funding will bring i-teams to Durham, Baltimore, Austin, Detroit, Anchorage, Be’er Sheva (Israel), and Toronto. This will be the first i-team in Canada. And I am excited to see what they are able to accomplish.

Matthew Townsend of Bloomberg recently published an interesting article talking about the dominance of Amazon.com (and online shopping in general); the shift towards experiences over stuff; and the languishing brick-and-mortar brands that keep saying it’s the macroeconomy, rather their product/approach, which is causing sales to slump.

Here are a 3 excerpts that stood out for me:

Lurking behind the cliché is a hard truth these executives are eager to avoid. “All this pleading that the consumer isn’t spending is an excuse, largely from management teams whose product is less relevant,” Kernan said. “The consumer is actually driving the U.S. economy, so it’s a little ridiculous when we hear the excuse of the macro environment is not good.”

Another hurdle that isn’t going away is the shift to increased spending on experiences such as travel and classes, which make for much better posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. “Social media has really fostered a have-done environment, which is not what retailers sell,” Perkins said.

One characteristic of these struggling brick-and-mortar chains has been direct competition with Amazon. If they don’t go head-to-head with the online giant, they rely heavily on people visiting shopping centers anchored by retailers that do, such as ailing department-store chains Macy’s and Sears. One measure of store visits in the U.S. paints a dire picture, with only a dozen positive weeks over the past two years.

According to Bloomberg, 55% of online product searches start at Amazon.com. And while online sales in 2016 have only accounted for 11% of all (U.S.) retail revenue, it has represented 54% of all growth! That’s a big number, especially when you think about what that will mean over time.

Talking about the growth and threat of online shopping has become a boring truism. I know that. But are retail executives taking it seriously? The Bloomberg article gives you the sense that many are not – or at least they’re not publicly acknowledging it.

When I look around my place right now and think about where I bought each item – everything from the shoes at my door to the protein powder in my cupboard – it’s pretty amazing to think about how much I now buy online. And I’m sure that many of you are the same.

Groceries aside, I’m probably 85-90% online. What about you?

Barry Ritholtz recently published an article in Bloomberg View called: Still a Lot of Negativity on Housing. 

He basically says that “many people” should go out and buy a home given the current state of the US housing market and the historically low interest rates. That’s a perfectly fine argument. But it’s not all that interesting.

The article does, however, have a moderately interactive chart showing the percentage of US households that own their homes.

It shows the pre-2008 peak:

And it shows, somewhat surprisingly, the recent “search for bottom.” I knew there was a significant post-2008 decline, but I guess I thought it had stabilized. Instead, the US is hitting homeownership rates not seen since the mid-1960s.

Big cities tend to have a higher percentage of renters. Millennials are flooding into cities. The digital economy now encourages mobility, which contradicts traditional notions of homeownership. There are all kinds of potential hypotheses that could be extracted here.

But the other interesting thing I noticed in the article, was this:

However, at some point in life, you probably no longer want to have a landlord telling you what color your walls can be or become tired of having strangers share a wall with you. I am not a zealous believer that everyone should go out and buy a home. However, for many people, buying makes sense – especially with mortgage rates as low as they are (the current rate of about 3.45 percent for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is just 0.10 percent higher than the record low).

I couldn’t help but notice the embedded cultural bias. The inference is that when you rent, you share walls. In other words, you live in some sort of multi-family apartment. 

But when you finally go out and buy a home, you graduate from that. You no longer need to share walls with strangers. Because an owned home equals a single-family detached dwelling. That’s how you know you’ve made it.

Well, I have shared walls in my owned home. I guess I’m not there yet. :)