Standing on the Sun. Christopher Meyer

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СКАЧАТЬ to managers in the United States, where the burden of improving public education falls primarily on public servants. But there's little consensus around the world on how business and government should between them serve the public. (In the United States, for example, the burden of health insurance coverage has been borne by employers.) Why should the arrangements set up by yesterday's superpowers go unquestioned?

      Meanwhile, in China, capitalism is flourishing but with a heavy cost to the environment. When Walmart arrived with a plan to build eco-friendly, LEED-certified facilities relying on local contractors, the idea was met with great enthusiasm. As it became clear that those subcontractors lacked the engineering knowledge to deliver, however, Walmart didn't trim its ambitions; instead, it devoted resources to teaching the Chinese construction companies what they needed to know at its own expense. Under old-school capitalism, firms don't work this hard to keep from polluting unless the law forces them to. Environmental impact is what economists call an externality, and not something that must be factored in to one's own profit-maximizing equations. But we think that many more capitalists, sometimes because they're forced to but sometimes because they want to, will start internalizing the costs of externalities.

      Let's underscore the theme here: we're seeing much of this rule-breaking and rule-reshaping activity (though not all of it) outside the world's most mature economies. Like the Americans who redefined capitalism in the nineteenth century, emerging-economy capitalists have the advantage of designing enterprises on a cleaner slate. They are building institutions to take full advantage of today's capabilities and conditions, unimpeded by any vested interest in sustaining the obsolete.

      The “capitalism abroad” part of our title, however, doesn't assume only one definition of “here.” Our point is that wherever you are, you need to attend to developments elsewhere. If you're an American, watch the emerging economies for cost-slashing innovations. If you're in India, Africa will be leapfrogging your payment systems. If you're in Singapore, look at how Brazil is exploiting bottom-up initiatives. The degree of connectedness and diversity of the global economy means that no island is an island.

      Wherever you are, as capitalism takes new forms, the ways to succeed in the capitalist system will change, too. Firms will rise and fall according to how well they have tracked the shifting territory. You—your firm if you are a manager, your constituency if you are a politician, yourself if you are all you need to protect—will prosper according to how well you adapt. As the environment around you moves on, you must know how to move with it. It's no good to be a finch with an unevolved beak.

      What to Expect from This Book

      In the past two years, plenty of books have been published about the recent financial crises, with many suggesting policy moves for avoiding them in the future. This is not another entry to that particular library. Rather, we focus on economic change drawn on a larger canvas and the ways it is ushering in a whole new future for capitalism. But the 2008 credit crunch and 2009 recession are not irrelevant. By casting serious doubt on the status quo, the crisis has given an extra push to the changes already under way. Alarm about the financial system has made the forces of inertia less potent and given people who already want to see change more reason to push ahead. Since the Great Recession, new-style capitalists have seen less risk in departing from established models, and defenders of the briefly unassailable “Washington Consensus” are no longer in a position to bully them.

      We are also eager to offer a caveat: we describe here many positive stories about capitalism in the emerging economies. But we spend little time on the many shortcomings that exist there. We understand that corruption, crime, and greed exist abroad, too, and that every economy will have to continue to deal with them. In fact, we see no greater threat to the developments we describe than cronyism in capitalism, which as far as we know damages the performance of every capitalist country. But that is not our subject.

      This book presents in three main parts our version of what will come next. Part I, Capitalism Adapts, explains the dynamics of the coming change. Chapter 1 describes the most important ways in which the landscape of commerce is changing, and chapter 2 explains just how a complex system like capitalism adapts.

      Part II, Runaways and Renaissance, identifies two major ways in which today's dominant form of capitalism misses the mark, explains how solutions to these problems will evolve, and shows how a new form of capitalism will reorganize economic sectors. The first problem, explored in chapters 3 and 4, is the form of value that capitalism is tuned to produce. A powerful system that formerly pursued financial returns relentlessly but narrowly will change to one that just as relentlessly pursues value measured more broadly. The second problem, covered in chapters 5 and 6, is its modus operandi. We show how a shift from cherishing competition in its own right to cherishing innovation will allow more innovation to occur, sometimes through intense competition but often not. When these excesses are overcome and when value and innovation occupy center stage, capitalism's fixed belief in the strict separation of the public and private sectors gives way (as described in chapter 7) to a world in which business, government, and NGOs no longer need to be adversarial.

      Finally, in part III, Moving On, we take our vision of transformed capitalism and imagine how actors within the system might in turn adapt. We do this at a macroeconomic level in chapter 8, and at the more micro level of the firm in chapter 9.

      One final, framing point: our conclusions arise out of analysis, not advocacy. The demotion of financial profit as one of many kinds of value, and of competition as a useful tool rather than an unquestioned dogma, arise from the trends emerging around the world and capitalism's vital property: adaptability.

      At the outset, we can assure you: the patient lives. That's not what you were told in the midst of the downturn. You saw the analyses in the business press: the Economist's cover story “Capitalism at Bay.” The Washington Post's editorializing: “Is Capitalism Dead?” As recently as August 2011, Nouriel Roubini asking again, “Is Capitalism Doomed?”

      We agree that capitalism took its knocks. But it can rise to meet the challenge. It won't look the same—but in some lights it has never looked better.

      We like the way playwright Tom Stoppard put it. His Rock 'n' Roll is set in the former Czechoslovakia and explores, among other themes, the fall of communism. In the play, an Oxford professor muses on the “beautiful ideas” of Marx and wonders how it could be that the revolution didn't succeed. It's another character, Stephen, who explains:

      “Marx read his Darwin but he missed it. Capitalism doesn't self-destruct; it adapts.”

      We're interested in your reactions to the ideas we present in this book, and we're always fascinated by fresh examples. To make it easier for you to share them with us, we're relying on a Web site and social media. Please visit us at www.standingonthesun.com, or post notes on Twitter using the following hashtags:

       Chapter One Ideas:

       #newlands #newhands

       Chapter Two Ideas:

       #runaway #coevolution #greenfield

       Chapter Three Ideas:

       #happiness #triplebl #ROE

       Chapter Four Ideas:

       #externality #scale #sensor #sensibility

       Chapter Five Ideas:

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