Two bloggers on Harvard Business Review’s website (http://hbr.org) in very different voices are helping to define the next era of business, post-crash. Umair Haque provokes and hyperbolizes, while Roger Martin writes sober, crafted prose, yet both say much of the same thing: business as usual – shareholder value maximization, “greed is good,” arbitrage- and exploitation-based commerce – needs to go. In its place will be socially-aware businesses that profit by garnering their workers’ best efforts and delivering distinctive, thick value to customers.
Samples:
Hypercompetition — and hypercollaboration — is accelerating. The people formerly known as consumers are now your peers. Regulators have a keener eye and a longer arm. Stakeholders went from being hippie pacifists to shark-toothed activists. In this world, mere innovation and “strategy”are commodities. Globally, naked consumption must transition into durable investment. Meaning is the new cornerstone of advantage: Does what you produce actually make anyone meaningfully better off?
as corporations have ballooned in size, the [CEO's] community has become far more impersonal and distant. Customers and employees have become more dispersed and distant and the home city has become less central — even expendable, as Boeing’s abandonment of Seattle demonstrated. And perhaps most important, a company’s owners have become a group of distant professionals who trade their holdings at the click of a button. Many large shareholdings, in fact, aren’t even managed by people.
Are they seers, or delusionists? I hope it’s the former. But you should read them both and decide for yourself.
Related posts:
Prior mention of Umair Haque
Posts mentioning Roger Martin
