(2011-12-28) Gordon Everything Becomes A Coffee House

Stephen Gordon anticipates that everything (College Education; Retail=ECommerce) will become a Coffee House. Eventually you could have local campuses becoming places where MITx students seek tutoring, network, and socialize – reclaiming some of the college experience they’d otherwise have lost... Between EBook-s and print-on-demand, Barnes And Noble-sized stores shrink down to just their coffee shops – or maybe StarBucks takes over their business. Either way, customers keep the experience of reading with coffee and those big comfortable chairs... Which is more enjoyable: Starbucks or WalMart? For the sane: Starbucks. So if you can accomplish your Walmart shopping at Starbucks, why do it any other way?.. Going forward the workplace will need the same sort of flexibility that I described for education. Groups for one project will form and then disband and then reform with new members for the next project (Group Forming, CoWorking). What will that workplace look like? Probably closer to Starbucks than Bob Par’s cubicle... What will remain other than coffee shops? Upscale retail will remain – people paying as much for the experience as for the goods purchased (Experience Economy). Restaurants remain. Grocery stores remain. Bricks And Mortar retail stores will be converted to Public Space-s. Multi-use space (Public Library, Hacker Space) will be in increasing demand as connectivity tools allow easy coordination of impromptu events. Some Big Retail stores will be converted to industrial 3D printer (Desktop Fab) factories. These heavy-duty fab labs will fabricate products that are too big or complicated to fabricate at home.