Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab and author of The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business. He also founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that shaped strategies across media and consumer industries.
Email Tweet This Post to Facebook Share on LinkedIn PrintTo usher in the new year, an exciting occasion: my new book, The New Capitalist Manifesto, has been published by HBR.
I'd like to extend a warm thank you to regular readers, and those who've commented here — our discussions have enlightened, stimulated, and challenged me. And, of course, my awesomely talented editors here at Harvard Business Review, in particular Sarah Green, without whom my manuscript would have remained little more than a series of meandering scribblings.
So: why did I write it — and why should you read it? In short, the art and practice of capitalism itself might need deep-rooted innovation.
Lest you think I'm being hyperbolic, reflect for a moment on a small laundry list of what industrial-age capitalism hasn't been able to achieve in America during the last decade. Creating net jobs. Growing median income. Creating shareholder value. Creating net wealth. And that's just the tip of a titanic iceberg (for example, here's what an authentic prosperity probably doesn't look like: corporations booking record profits while towns, countries, and households go broke, banks boosting margins thanks to never-ending taxpayer life support, debt-fueled hyperconsumption substituting for happiness, and productivity spiking while empathy, trust, and a sense of meaning in work, life and play dwindle).
Hence, I'd argue that capitalism's got to do better — and to get there, capitalists have to aspire to matter. For too long, capitalists have taken people, communities, society, nature, and the future for granted — but today, they damn well shouldn't. Industrial-age capitalism is, we're discovering the hard way, predicated on extracting wealth from people, communities, society, nature, and the future — and so the fundamental challenge of the 21st century is learning to create authentic, meaningful, lasting value for them: what Michael Porter and Mark Kramer have termed shared value, and what I call thick value in the Manifesto.
Argue with me all you like, raise indignant armies of PowerPoint-wielding MBAs against me if you must, but I believe that capitalism has reached a crossroads. To continue to fulfill its promise of being transformative, to continue to help humanity scale greater heights of achievement, discover deeper wellsprings of potential, and safeguard the hard-won spark of an enduring, authentic prosperity, it's time to take a quantum leap beyond yesterday's capitalism. And while I'm delighted that giants (many of my intellectual heroes, truth be told) like Porter, Peter Senge, Gary Hamel, Martin Wolf, and others agree, it's another matter to get to the other side.
That might just demand abandoning some — or even most — of yesterday's tired, toxic assumptions about what prosperity is, where it comes from, how it's ignited, and why it matters. In short, it might demand making a firm break with the status quo, leaving the lumbering herd behind, pushing past the envelope of the possible, taking an improbable journey — and striking out for uncharted shores.
The Manifesto, then, is an account of what a capitalism reimagined and reinvented for the 21st century might look and feel like. Among the notions it challenges are the following:
That a firm exists to create value solely for its owners, at the expense of people, communities, society, nature, and the future.
That financial "profit" is the best representation of the enduring wealth a firm creates. That competitiveness is the product of beating, bashing, and crushing rivals, instead of bettering them.
That the wellsprings of competitiveness arise from a near-term strategy to extract value, instead of a long-term philosophy to create thicker, more broadly shared value.
That industrial age efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness are the right denominators of next-generation competitiveness.
That the lasting success of a firm, economy, or country is best measured by income — not outcomes that matter in human terms.
That what matter more than creativity, passion, fulfillment and meaning are obedience, control, power, and domination.
That the world is linear, equilibrating, atomistic — instead of nonlinear, unpredictable, and interdependent.
Though I chronicle the rise of a crop of renegades — companies like Google, Apple, Nike, Threadless, to name just a few — challenging the cherished beliefs above, at root, the Manifesto isn't about companies. It's a guide to learning to chisel new cornerstones: new institutions, or institutionalized practices and patterns of production and consumption.
I won't pretend that the Manifesto has many — or even any — easy, pat, textbook answers. There probably aren't any, and that's the point. What I do hope is that it helps you sculpt your own cornerstones.
The future belongs to those who create it. So what are you waiting for?
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I'd like to extend a warm thank you to regular readers, and those who've commented here — our discussions have enlightened, stimulated, and challenged me. And, of course, my awesomely talented editors here at Harvard Business Review, in particular Sarah Green, without whom my manuscript would have remained little more than a series of meandering scribblings.
So: why did I write it — and why should you read it? In short, the art and practice of capitalism itself might need deep-rooted innovation.
Lest you think I'm being hyperbolic, reflect for a moment on a small laundry list of what industrial-age capitalism hasn't been able to achieve in America during the last decade. Creating net jobs. Growing median income. Creating shareholder value. Creating net wealth. And that's just the tip of a titanic iceberg (for example, here's what an authentic prosperity probably doesn't look like: corporations booking record profits while towns, countries, and households go broke, banks boosting margins thanks to never-ending taxpayer life support, debt-fueled hyperconsumption substituting for happiness, and productivity spiking while empathy, trust, and a sense of meaning in work, life and play dwindle).
Hence, I'd argue that capitalism's got to do better — and to get there, capitalists have to aspire to matter. For too long, capitalists have taken people, communities, society, nature, and the future for granted — but today, they damn well shouldn't. Industrial-age capitalism is, we're discovering the hard way, predicated on extracting wealth from people, communities, society, nature, and the future — and so the fundamental challenge of the 21st century is learning to create authentic, meaningful, lasting value for them: what Michael Porter and Mark Kramer have termed shared value, and what I call thick value in the Manifesto.
Argue with me all you like, raise indignant armies of PowerPoint-wielding MBAs against me if you must, but I believe that capitalism has reached a crossroads. To continue to fulfill its promise of being transformative, to continue to help humanity scale greater heights of achievement, discover deeper wellsprings of potential, and safeguard the hard-won spark of an enduring, authentic prosperity, it's time to take a quantum leap beyond yesterday's capitalism. And while I'm delighted that giants (many of my intellectual heroes, truth be told) like Porter, Peter Senge, Gary Hamel, Martin Wolf, and others agree, it's another matter to get to the other side.
That might just demand abandoning some — or even most — of yesterday's tired, toxic assumptions about what prosperity is, where it comes from, how it's ignited, and why it matters. In short, it might demand making a firm break with the status quo, leaving the lumbering herd behind, pushing past the envelope of the possible, taking an improbable journey — and striking out for uncharted shores.
The Manifesto, then, is an account of what a capitalism reimagined and reinvented for the 21st century might look and feel like. Among the notions it challenges are the following:
That a firm exists to create value solely for its owners, at the expense of people, communities, society, nature, and the future.
That financial "profit" is the best representation of the enduring wealth a firm creates. That competitiveness is the product of beating, bashing, and crushing rivals, instead of bettering them.
That the wellsprings of competitiveness arise from a near-term strategy to extract value, instead of a long-term philosophy to create thicker, more broadly shared value.
That industrial age efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness are the right denominators of next-generation competitiveness.
That the lasting success of a firm, economy, or country is best measured by income — not outcomes that matter in human terms.
That what matter more than creativity, passion, fulfillment and meaning are obedience, control, power, and domination.
That the world is linear, equilibrating, atomistic — instead of nonlinear, unpredictable, and interdependent.
Though I chronicle the rise of a crop of renegades — companies like Google, Apple, Nike, Threadless, to name just a few — challenging the cherished beliefs above, at root, the Manifesto isn't about companies. It's a guide to learning to chisel new cornerstones: new institutions, or institutionalized practices and patterns of production and consumption.
I won't pretend that the Manifesto has many — or even any — easy, pat, textbook answers. There probably aren't any, and that's the point. What I do hope is that it helps you sculpt your own cornerstones.
The future belongs to those who create it. So what are you waiting for?
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