Re-Capitalism

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Re-Capitalism, by Chris Meyer.

"Marx read his Darwin but he got it wrong— capitalism doesn't self-destruct, it adapts."
-- Tom Stoppard, Rock 'n' Roll

Capitalism is not immutable — it's changed before (remember industrialization?) and will again.

Darwin wrote about the finches of the Galapagos Islands, observing that the shape of each population's beaks matched the form of the particular flowers that provided their food. Think of businesses as the individuals of the capitalist species. The shapes of companies will evolve as the world changes around them.

What changes? To big ones: the world's growth will no longer come from the high-income economies (the consume 77% of world GDP today — only 32% by 2050.) Second, just as industrial technology shaped the society of the United States' in the 20th Century, information technology will be the basis of the emerging "digital native" economies in the 21st. Like finches, businesses will change their shapes to make their living in this new low income, high growth, globally connected, information-intensive environment.

How? They will learn to price and market goods whose marginal cost is zero. They will learn to profit from giving away value. They will prefer collaboration to competition. They will assume responsibility for the newly measurable "externalities" they impose on their societies.

If you live or operate in the developed world, you've got a problem — you have a lot to unlearn, and no short-term incentive to do it. But better not ignore the competitor with the strange-looking beak.

Chris Meyer, co-author of Blur, The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy, is writing a book about the evolution of capitalism. HBR blog, "You Call That Capitalism?" at http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/meyer-kirby/.

Connected

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Connected, by Howard Mann.

There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year in profits that still haven’t ever heard of twitter, blogs or facebook. Are they all wrong? Have they missed out or is the joke really on us? They do business through personal relationships, by delivering great customer service and it’s working for them. They’re more successful than most of those businesses who spend hours pontificating about how others lose out by missing social media and the latest wave. And yet they’re doing business. Great business. Not writing about it. Doing it.

I’m continually amazed by the number of people on Twitter and on blogs, and the growth of people (and brands) on facebook. But I’m also amazed by how so many of us are spending our time. The echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder.

More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue. We’ve become slaves to our mobile devices and the glow of our screens. It used to be much more simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow.

We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before. Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want to know why.

I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I find myself thinking about them more and more. In between tweets, blog posts and facebook updates.

Howard Mann is a speaker, entrepreneur and the author of Your Business Brickyard.

Ease

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Ease, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

We are the strivingest people who have ever lived. We are ambitious, time-starved, competitive, distracted. We move at full velocity, yet constantly fear we are not doing enough. Though we live longer than any humans before us, our lives feel shorter, restless, breathless...

Dear ones, EASE UP. Pump the brakes. Take a step back. Seriously. Take two steps back. Turn off all your electronics and surrender over all your aspirations and do absolutely nothing for a spell. I know, I know – we all need to save the world. But trust me: The world will still need saving tomorrow. In the meantime, you’re going to have a stroke soon (or cause a stroke in somebody else) if you don’t calm the hell down.

So go take a walk. Or don’t. Consider actually exhaling. Find a body of water and float. Hit a tennis ball against a wall. Tell your colleagues that you’re off meditating (people take meditation seriously, so you’ll be absolved from guilt) and then actually, secretly, nap.

My radical suggestion? Cease participation, if only for one day this year – if only to make sure that we don’t lose forever the rare and vanishing human talent of appreciating ease.

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love. Her new book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage will be published in January, 2010.