Sunday, October 5, 2008

Re: Bruce Nussbaum - Congress Readies To Vote On The Financial Package--Get Ready For The Post-Wall Street World.

Congress Readies To Vote On The Financial Package--Get Ready For The Post-Wall Street World.

It’s time to step back and see the contours of our redesigned global political economy. The refutation of the past 30 years of neo-liberal market economics—which is what the financial crisis and government enforced resolution is all about—is translating into the creation of a new economic model. The shape of that new economic model is just coming into focus and it will be a year or so until we see it all clearly. But we have clarity on a few things.

For help in understanding where we are going, I strongly suggest you get the last three issues of Rotman, The Magazine of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. The latest, Fall, issue entitled The Future of Capital, has a piece by dean Roger Martin on the shift in value from capital to talent. This will be a major trend going forward. Over the past 30 years, finance has come to dominate the American economy and while it has helped lubricate Silicon Valley and entrepreneurship, it has also skewered incentives, compensation and investment. The value of human capital will rise vis a vis financial capital in the years ahead.

In the Winter 2008 issue of Rotman, called Thinking About Thinking, there are two articles on how Design Thinking can deal with the problems of economic and social uncertainty and change, and offer a process of generating options and solutions that manage and mitigate risk.
Martin has a new book coming out on Design Thinking--or what he calls Integrative Thinking--in the months ahead. It's a must-read for this new era we are entering.

Right now we are living life in constant beta. And we need tools and methods to understand and deal with it. Rotman is now a must-read.

Next up--Innovation Economics.

This ties in to companies trying to capture the spirit of what Apple and Google have accomplished - creating integrative products that allow the user to feel as if they're part of something, rather than just another faceless consumer.