Standing on the Sun. Christopher Meyer

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      Standing on the Sun

      HOW THE EXPLOSION OF CAPITALISM ABROAD WILL CHANGE BUSINESS EVERYWHERE

      Christopher Meyer

      with Julia Kirby

      Harvard Business Review Press

       Boston, Massachusetts

      Copyright 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

      All rights reserved

      Printed in the United States of America

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to [email protected], or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Meyer, Christopher, 1948-

      Standing on the sun : how the explosion of capitalism abroad will change business everywhere / Christopher Meyer with Julia Kirby.

      p. cm.

      ISBN 978-1-4221-3168-8 (hardback)

      1. International trade. I. Kirby, Julia. II. Title.

      HF1379.M493 2012

      330.12'2—dc23

      2011032402

       Chris Meyer

      To my teachers:

      Emily Alford

      George Norton Stone

      Philip Wagreich

      Otto Eckstein

      Peter Temple and Carl Sloane

      Stan Davis

      Stuart Kauffman

      Kevin Kelly

       Julia Kirby

      To my family:

      Alan, David, Jane, and Ted

      Contents

      Introduction

       The center of capitalism?

       Part I Capitalism Adapts

      ONE Capitalism's New Center of Gravity

       The shifting environment of the global economy

      TWO Cambrian Capitalism

       Runaway feedback, the peacock's tale, and the evolution of capitalism

       Part II Runaways and Renaissance

      THREE Capitalism in Color

       What doesn't get measured … needs to be

      FOUR Embracing Externalities

       How corporations will adapt to new forms of feedback

      FIVE Pseudocompetition

       Killing the sacred cow of capitalism

      SIX The Invisible Handshake

       Collaborative production as the world's business model

      SEVEN The Fourth Sector

       The social sector as capitalism's R&D lab

       Part III Moving On

      EIGHT Call It Capitalism …

       Global monopolies and national business models

      NINE … And Move On

       The new multinational as the vector of economic evolution

      Epilogue

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Acknowledgments

       About the Authors

      Introduction

       The center of capitalism?

      In the central market in Phnom Penh, the smell of sweet pork sausages on street vendors' grills hangs in the humid air, and the sound of merchants and motorbikes is a constant buzz. Inside the huge, domed bazaar and surrounding awning-covered stalls, it's easy to lose your bearings; around the next corner you might find silver jewelry, vibrant silks, $20 knockoffs of vintage Movados with movements made in Russia. On a recent visit, Chris, traveling with family, edged past an eight-foot pile of hoodies and was confronted by a table of Hollywood films at roughly 50 cents per DVD.

      He wasn't surprised; it's what one has come to expect in a country that is not itself a significant producer of intellectual property. Chris thought of the usual prediction: that as such nations' economies mature, they begin to see the light and devote the resources to protect intellectual property rights. As grown-up capitalists, surely they'll live by grown-up capitalist rules. But in the midst of that buzzing Cambodian hive of capitalism, it was hard to hold fast to the belief. He had to wonder, Would emerging economies really adopt a two-hundred-year-old approach to intellectual property? Or would their rapid ascendance give them the chance for a do-over so that they might concoct a new way of conducting business more aligned to the realities of the digital age? And then, as they gradually overtook the first world in vitality and sheer size, would a new global norm take shape around their practice?

      A few months later, we started researching this book. Its thesis, in a nutshell, is that capitalism itself is a system and that as the environment that hosts capitalism changes—in particular, as the better part of global economic growth begins to occur outside the mature economies of the West—the capitalist system will evolve.

      This is a high-level argument—and a tough one to counter. Like any “ism,” capitalism is a social construct; capitalism is only a term for what capitalists tend to believe and do. Beyond a few fundamentals—that it puts faith in markets as the best way to allocate resources, that it depends on private ownership of property, that it features mechanisms for accumulating capital to fund endeavors larger than individuals can undertake alone—very СКАЧАТЬ