Chris’s mission is to anticipate & shape the future of business. He has pursued this goal as entrepreneur, author, leader of a think tank, consultant, & executive. He founded Monitor Talent, part of the Monitor Group, to improve the markets for human capital. He is the author of the Business Week Best-Seller BLUR: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy; his fourth book, Standing on the Sun–How the Explosion of Capitalism Abroad Will Change Business Everywhere, will be published in July 2011 by the Harvard Business School Press.)
“Marx read his Darwin but he got it wrong—
capitalism doesn’t self-destruct, it adapts.”
–Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
Capitalism is not immutable—it’s changed before (remember industrialization?) & will again. Darwin wrote about the finches of the Galapagos Islands, observing that the shapes of their beaks changed depending on the form of the flowers they had to fit into to get 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? Two big ones: the world’s growth will no longer come from the high-income economies (they 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 economies in the 21st. Like finches, businesses will change their shapes to make their living in this new low income, high growth, globally connected, digital-native environment.
How? They will learn to price & market goods whose marginal cost is zero. They will learn to profit from giving value away. They will assume responsibility for the newly measurable “externalities” they impose on their societies. They will collaborate more & often choose collaboration over competition.
If you live or operate in the developed world, you’ve got a problem — you have a lot to unlearn, & no short term incentive to do it. But better not ignore the competitor with the strange-looking beak.
Chris Meyer
Innovator• Business Builder • Author on the Future of the Global Economy
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