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Re: Green Shoots: MyGengo and Hyperakt

Dave Davis — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:36:44 -0000

I agree that these are interesting directions, and in particular design has a major role to play in world-shaping. I'd like to respond to some of your questions though...

First I'm not sure that fluid, dynamic, market-driven prices are always desireable, because they're frequently not sustainable by definition. A flood of interest or success will drive the best and brightest to greener pastures and away from a such dynamic markets. You're missing some of your own best ideas in this question. Labor costs completely untethered from cost of living create unstable markets, and trend towards booms/busts. As work chases the lowest cost provider, the previous low-cost provider goes belly up whenever there's someone a little hungrier. Skills and other intangible benefits are masked by cost differences, and when those differences kill a strong, smart provider you can't count on the replacement-provider having the same knowledge, workflow or results. It's not sustainable in the long term, and doesn't result in the best work.

Likewise when you ask MyGengo to offer translation derivatives you're sliding the weak old model that begat the TARP into the future, expanding it in areas that make little sense. You're either betting against translators or for a market to grow in irrational ways.

Breaking this problem into variable sized chunks limits the potential to use reputations and identities and still get things done in a timely manner. I'm not sure you can grow a market like this, but you might be able to grow networks that surround it, and awareness of the benefits over Google and free tools, through social engagement and participation in the market. Captchas break optical scan translation problems into single word challenges, which suggests games, especially on busy international social networks, could be used in similar ways.

I'm not sure I follow your strategy, or how MyGengo relates to that. How do they alter structure and intensity of search costs? Also all of these share-cropping startups love grabbing a percentage of sales, but across a system these add up quickly. If the broker gets 15%, Paypal takes another cut, Visa or bank another, not to mention the ISP selling you bandwidth, the app/toolmakers like 37signals, Quickbooks or Mint, etc etc it all adds up. Many business models that work on paper are nickle-and-dimed to oblivion. In sum these middlemen often drive ROI down and transaction costs up, one cut at a time. I've been through that exercise with our startup, and while we made our numbers in the first year, Web 2.0 vendors made it really hard - we have so many marginal players, at so many choke points (e.g. digital distributors of music - they all take a hefty chunk of gross, on products with fixed or falling prices, via different transactional models that are effectively worse than the status quo. The music industry is a pathological example - it's always been set up to shift costs onto artists, and away from the full time paper pushers. But I don't see Amazon's pay-as-you-go structure as innovative or attractive. Rather they aggregate a fluid market, then allow you to play in their pool at for a premium. Much of this is paid whether or not you make a sale, so it's more fairly a "transaction plus" model.

Which gets to the real issue: A market with a single broker/platform isn't really a much of a market at all. It seems to pit translators against one another, as opposed to networking them into a single market-facing entity that competes with the conventional translation market. The latter model would keep wages at a living level, and avoid a race to the bottom. Its a little more resistant to boom/bust cycles as well, creating the kind of stable market you need if you hope for it to grow. Wild price fluctuations, like bids for AdWords that must be monitored daily, or for that matter the stock market (which swings as much from noise as signal), are inherently inefficient, and are the problem, not realistic or sustainable solutions. This focus on transaction costs and margins has been great for Apple and Steve Jobs, but have also contributed to the recently Lost Decade. Some "fluid" markets have increased speculation alongside costs, and mask a lot of social damage that results. It's little different than our artificially low oil prices, suppressed by shifting costs away from the pump and onto the federal government in the form of higher taxes that everyone pays (regardless of energy use). Artificially low "market rates" for labor (below living wage) drives those with that skill out of markets by necessity. In many areas, we're losing expertise, skills and ideas as the best drop out or retire. So the newcomers are forced to reinvent wheels, and necessarily drop balls. Everyone suffers until they get up to speed, at which time someone cheaper shows up and it all starts again.

Good ideas, but the questions seem to lead in the wrong direction.

Re: Green Shoots: MyGengo and Hyperakt

Dave Davis — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 07:24:26 -0000

Nice review, RL. My intent wasn't to demean MyGengo, rather to challenge Umair's questions, especially with respect to his own prior writing. I think he's right that both companies are positive examples, and they can certainly push further as he suggests. But a couple of the questions and ideas he puts forward to get there contradict his values argument in fundamental ways.

Hedges and overly-responsive markets are the problem. For instance, when a company trades below the value of it's assets, the old view was "hey it's a bargain." There was no concern if the drop was due to false rumors about the CEO or product line, or some nefarious party manipulating the market on a TV show or through strategic purchases (see: Hunt brothers, and cocoa prices today). In human terms these are anti-social behaviors, but in a business world with no values other than the bottom line, they're just an incredibly sweet deal. Never mind the job losses, dislocations, and sometimes much broader market impact of the collapse, there's money to be made! (see: AIG).

False markets are generally bad, and this goes beyond ever-phony stock prices. When we're happy to accept wild fluctuations in gas prices that hurt the poorest/weakest first, while we subsidize the manufacture of the product to maintain an addiction that's profitable, we lose the possibility of market correction. Properly priced energy would spur development of new sources and sustainable models, but we've removed the positive mechanism from the market (by fighting the oil companies wars on the government dole). Advocating reactive, fluid pricing makes sense if connected to values.

This goes back to my primary critique of Umair's work: He's not done the hard work of connecting the values he speaks of to economic yardsticks and measures. He's not working out tools to look into markets and pricing, taking forseeable consequences in the long term and human spheres into account. We need True Costs (and profits/benefits) in our financial reports, especially those we use to make decisions and bid on ideas. Most readers of this blog get that values matter, and are a missing dimension. At least a few of us are frustrated at how little effort is put into solving the problems, relative to identifying them (Umair and many others have done a good job, time to move forward).

Re: The Power to Pull Prosperity

Dave Davis — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 08:51:19 -0000

I just got this book and agree with you that it's a milestone, well worth reading. At the same time, some of the ideas are a little scary when you think them through. Specific examples:

The concept of individuals being amplified by thier institutions and those institutions being amplified by arenas is certainly true and best exemplified by Sarah Palin's relationship with the Tea Party. Whatever one thinks of Ms. Palin's intellect and ideas, her ability to commandeer the institution of right wing politics to and effect change across the arena of American politics proves the point. Unfortunately, this amplification, absent positive values and rationality best serves the past, and ultimately seems like a mean prank; the faux populism in service of conventional rightist memes that subvert the population is hardly new, and suggests the darker applications for "pull" are well ahead of positive benefits.

Second and more ominous are some of the books thoughts on the individual. The authors probably don't realize that the values their meme supports epitomize "all work and no play make Jack a dull boy." They advocate passion for work as essential. As one who has followed that advice and has such passion, I concur. But in the context of this book and it's advice, passion is really an all-consuming death spiral. They assert that passion is necessary to rationalize a treadmill existence, where you fight new, ever-tougher battles all the live long day. As you age the challenges only get stiffer. But your returns and pay remain predicated on output and ability to change, which inevitably decline with our physical bodies. These ideas make sense and seem really great to people in their 20s and 30s, or to those who've already made it and profit directly off the intense, all-consuming labor of younger people. What of older workers who are just as passionate about the work, equally willing to sacrifice and change, but less able to do so physically? Toss 'em! They lose.

As you work through the tactics the book describes, it's chilling - at this stage of the game it's most commonly used for cynical, cheap cons, and it's hard to see how the Usual Suspects will pass on the opportunity to undermine real progress and change, by advocating a new form of techno-slavery. Taken to it's logical ends, it's a nightmare, sold as The New American Dream.

It's at least noteworthy that this new "dream" might push retirement age to later years, while cutting earning power in the added years by design. It's worth noting the dream accepts human obsolescence as a personality or individual flaw, rather than a systemic failure. And to date, some of it's widest, most familiar examples (Tea Party, Google, Walmart, shipping containers) are increasingly exploited to negative ends. Hustlers like Sarah Palin use it for personal advancement, with no responsibility or care for the outcome of their cons - she has no job, produces nothing of value, and the ideas she spews are mangled mash-ups that make no sense, but hold great appeal to scared people made obsolete by the tools she uses. In effect, the tactics confuse people into voting against their own interests.

Yes, this is an important book, with big ideas. I question it's values, and fear the ideas of many of these ideas, as it's clear they've already been put to bad use. It's a lot like atomic energy in that respect... maybe a necessary evil?

Re: The Institutional Innovation Manifesto

Dave Davis — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:23:27 -0000

As a long time reader, I'm really getting bored by all the manifestos and platitudes, when no discernable effort is expended to make these ideas more tangible, or provide economic yardsticks to make them possible to implement. All talk, no action. And the talk itself is supported by increasingly circular logic and empty assertions. As they said in 6th grade math class, "show your work!"

I appreciate the attempt to codify what you mean by institution, but this piece fails to get that done because some of the examples are at least reactionary cliches, if not plain wrong.

The mall is just a covered town square, run by private enterprise instead of government, often to interesting and productive ends. I'm not talking Mall of America, but more cutting edge malls, that are merging indoor/outdoor spaces, and explicitly reconnecting to street-scapes with outward-facing sections. Your comments here are cliche, at very best. Malls can aggregate markets in more efficient ways than the "town square" by virtue of being private: Most obviously they provide a 365-day year in any climate, and a far more safe, secure and focused market place for both tenants and shoppers. Increasingly they provide venue for school music groups, artists and non-commercial activities that attract diverse audiences. But unlike public venues, disruptive a-holes and clowns can be escorted off the premises without legal repercussions. Obviously such control has a dark side, but get real: what doesn't? Besides: I see little value in being exposed to non-unionized professional protesters (paid less-than-living wages without benefits by unions) at Walmart, or even other astroturfed activism that these venues exclude, like anti-abortion rightists or PETA howlers. I truly don't want/need it in my face, even if those folks truly want to be there. Your rights end at the tip of my nose, as they say, so I see no problem with excluding some speech or activities in private spaces, even common ones.

You paint banks with an equally broad brush, to the same effect. You've actually cited a few banking institutions that ARE just for the rest of us! In my community there are similar options, including credit unions - a classic bank by another name that fits your definitions well. You're conflating solvable problems in a very pithy but non-productive way. The problem isn't that banks have grown too "big" or "evil" in recent years. Rather, Congress removed the thin barrier between investment and commercial banking, which are historically different businesses. Not all banks jumped on this train, but your piece suggests this by omission of this key problem and lack of specificity in your targets. At any rate the "institution" of banking is damaged, yet it retains many positive alternatives. We might agree any bank that's "too big to fail" and required tax payer bail out should be broken up, just like ATT was. And that shotgun weddings, like Bank of America's absorption of Countrywide and Merrell Lynch are the road to hell, for consumers, taxpayers and the institution of banking. But it might be more useful to finger the real culprit (allowing consumer banks to operate as investment banks), and acknowledge workable solutions that exist within the current institution.

By the time you move to the stock market, I'm rolling my eyes. Last week, a poster made some sharp, useful comments on one of your pieces noting some specific ideas to slow speculation. While few will like transactional taxes and other discouragements to wild west style trading that exists, it's pretty obvious after the Flash Crash and the Great Recession that some rationality must be injected in the system. When companies can trade below the value of their assets and operations something is very wrong. When companies can trade beyond all rational measure, and collapse overnight when people wake up to that reality, what useful purpose is served (moral hazard is a quaint but clearly broken concept in our age)? What REAL measures and yardsticks can economists and marketeers provide investors to base rational bids on, and what specific institutional changes could disincentivize speculation and scams? This is an area where you have much to contribute. But as usual here, you duck the hard work and stick to increasingly empty declarations and rhetoric of a "manifesto".

I found the IPO section interesting in it's existence. I don't see this as an institution at all. Your writing doesn't clarify this at all. It appears to be just a punching bag for you to work out your ideas on. Your comments ignore many alternatives that already exist, while placing too much emphasis on one that's a facet of the previous institution you challenge above. Worse: If you read your closing "guess" carefully, it's clear the suggestion actually HAS NO solution! Your conditions are legally and socially impossible to reconcile with one another. Mountains of paper work are a necessity for any serious level of funding, and it protects all parties, not just the "evil investment bankers" (who are they? are there non-evil ones? what about VCs? Are all VCs equally or at all evil?), so no one can "solve" this problem (microloans are useful and interesting startup mechanisms, but they cannot scale without becoming ponzi schemes, ripe for far worse abuse).

Finally, I find many of the notions on "jobdom" both here and in the Hagel book, "The Power of Pull" to be pretty Orwellian and chilling when carried to their conclusions. Like all memes, they can trend good or bad. I actually HAVE a job like those described here, and have worked in such roles for all but 3 of the past 20 years. I wake up every day anxious to get to work. But I've paid a huge price for that choice, and short of socialism, there's no way to equitably provide such roles to all without enormous personal risk. Entreprenurial spirit is great and useful inside big orgs, and can be applied to great effect in the right institutions, which I presume is closer to your point. But the reality is such roles are frequently non-productive, and sustainability is a huge variable you can't predict at the outset. Therefore an institution wishing to redefine roles along the lines you suggest would need to bundle in some churn and unrewarding grunt-work to keep the doors open. This inevitably breaks down into a very conventional configuration, where elites play their day away to keep dancing on the event-horizon of innovation, while worker drones struggle with the heavy lifting to keep the lights on.

Let me put a finer point on it: Few people want to be the garbage man, and fewer still want to clean grease traps and empty portolets. But as long as people generate waste and require food, these jobs remain necessary and viable. They cannot be "funned up" beyond a certain point, so financial incentives are what remain. As more people redefine jobdom along the lines described here, the satisfaction gap between those doing interesting work and those doing grunt work will grow, absent some other ROI of time spent grunting. This is never acknowledged by the elites writing books like "The Power of Pull" and "The Long Tail" (who themselves are engaged in fun enterprises AND get paid better than the grunts). So your piece misses at least half the problem, and thus can't provide much of a solution or even point in any particular direction. You've got to acknowledge that much work is just, well, work.

Much of the rest is more useful. Your notion of "bottom line" seems to support my contention above. I think your ideas about Forporations are worth expanding and hold great promise, if you take the time and trouble to work through them and propose models, supported with facts and metrics. The same is true of your section on "the Board"; how hard would it be to flesh this simple proposal out? I suspect easier than laying out yet-another-manifesto, and more transformative to boot.

We get it, Mr. Haque: Institutional change is required and inevitable. Most here would agree on the domains and institutions in need of reform, if not a direction for such reform. To reconcile those differences, we need metrics and tools to look below the surface, in the way conventional business instruments (balance sheets, P&Ls, journals etc) allow us to look deeply into our operations. We don't need another simplistic manifesto repeating the same half-baked cliches and comfortable memes. These ideas are rapidly becoming just another "Peter Principle", just modern business jingos slung about. Where's the beef?

Lennon (not Lenin) had it about right in Revolution: "You tell me it's the institution, well, you know... you better free your mind instead!" Please, Mr. Haque, put down the pipe, and do a little heavy lifting for a change. Your readers will love it!

Re: The Institutional Innovation Manifesto

Dave Davis — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 08:06:42 -0000

Honestly we seem to agree on the basics here, so I find it odd that you're happy to urge the portolet/grease-trappers to out-grunt their bosses and foreign competitors, yet unwilling to challenge Umair to "show his work" and do the heavy intellectual lifting in his own field. That was my entire point.

Manifesto upon manifesto gets old fast, when the tactical & functional dimension is never explored at all. We'd agree Umair's work passionately inspires. But the limits of such inspiration contract without cues or ideas on implementation. To extend an example you mention, China's interior infrastructure has limited the benefits of it's growth to citizens nearest the coasts. Had India not considered the wires, switches and up/downlinks needed to answer telephones there would be no IT industry there. The same is true of Mr. Haque's work; lacking mundane foundation, and basic economic infrastructure they cannot thrive, no matter how much passion is pumped into the superstructure. Whatever manages to be built will collapse.

We already see workers being leaned on by their bosses, for good and ill. This is a great example of what I'm talking about. A key innovation happening on the "edges" of labor, mentioned in "The Power of Pull" discussing Netflix, is the move away from time-based compensation to output-based pay. This shift SHOULD have happened overnight on 9/12/2001; It makes conventional "bosses" obsolete, potentially reducing traffic nationwide, drops the costs of office space, IT and health care for employees, increases access to intellectual capital, and generally makes company's more flexible while improving quality of life for workers. Like it or not, it's happening at places like Netflix, challenging the darker models like Amazon's Mechanical Slav...err Turk. But in spite of the undeniable benefits, which are increasingly apparent on the balance sheets of companies using it like Netflix, adoption is slow. A big part is explained as enlightened self-interest of middle managers (especially Boomers) made obsolete as a class overnight, like buggy whip manufacturers. But another component is lack of infrastructure, and economic yardsticks that reveal hidden benefits (trajectory analyses of costs over time, non-economic dimensions of investment) and milestones for performance. If business HAD such measures, as clear and concise as ROI and P&L, this change would be over and done.

Manifestos simply can't get us to this promised land. Repeating the same tropes, without fleshing out the details, is little different than a Tea Party rally, just another meaningless, pie in the sky "Pledge to America". To use the parlance of "The Power of Pull", economic and intellectual grunt work needs doing to convince those with stores of capital at the core to fund innovation at the edge. Like it or not, to get where you want to go, REQUIRES participation of the balance sheet/P&L crowd, recognizing and advancing innovation in operations. The "Big Shift" has not changed this. A Portolet-emptier can only innovate to the extent his employers support and enable, and such enabling is best advanced through tools that reveal all dimensions of each innovation.

We need economic tools and measures that expose these dimensions, not another manifesto.

Re: Silicon Valley's Disruption Deficit Disorder

Dave Davis — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 11:25:03 -0000

One of the great things about this stage of the Awakening is relatively low barriers of entry for good ideas. Virtually anyone with sufficient time and skill can address these questions within a more narrow industry (as opposed to the institution of VC), and succeed or fail on the merits.

A couple good examples in my industry are Tunecore and Bandcamp. Until recently Bandcamp didn't have a visible business model, instead building competency and marketshare atop outsourced APIs and platforms (Paypal, Amazon S3, etc). Ultimately Bandcamp created a physical music sales platform that rivals label/industry darling TopSpin, disrupting the conventional hand-in-artist-pocket model beloved by scumbuckets who miss the old biz model (by the 90s labels devolved to a mashup of payday lenders with casinos). Tunecore disrupted the iTunes/Digital Distro world in a similar way - they moved from asking for a hefty cut of all sales to a flat fee-for-service model. This drove rates down across the board, and made more than a few digital distro competitors look bad. Neither required piles of VC, but both benefitted from enlightened, long term investment perspective. Either could be built and deployed ad hoc, and to some degree were!

Your larger point is sound, since many disruptive models DO require copious amounts of capital to launch. I would argue the largest barrier to change is the lack of business metrics and economic tools to quantify and modulate risk and opportunity. Investors asked to commit to long-term, disruptive endeavors presently take much on faith while relying too heavily on instinct and guesses. This means a major component of any deal is bullshit. We have to rely on "reality distortion fields" to provide the spine to take big risks. Showmanship and salesmanship trump great ideas because we lack a fair, clear yardstick to measure complex variables, and weigh risks, sustainability, and virtually any long term outcomes.

We don't have clear milestones to mark progress versus plans in markets that don't yet exist. This means we over-emphasize people's past accomplishments and push capital away from the edge, back to the core. If you accept Hegel et al's perspective in "The Power of Pull", it's clear this is backwards. VC should flow to the edge, away from the core.

Re: When Going Viral Is Not Engagement, but Ebola

Dave Davis — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 14:59:01 -0000

I agree Umair! You touch on something the Power of Pull authors also frequently mention, but don't really define: Return on Attention. This seems like a term that's ripe for quantification and measurement.

This matters, maybe more than all the words we can expend on the topic. One of the key motivators for making the change in perspective you (and the "Pull" guys) advocate is old fashioned profit. What distinguishes capitalism 1.0 from 2.0 isn't motive, but a longer term perspective, and a wider view of concerns. A case can be made that these are better measures of a firm's worth, significance, and stability in world of information flows. Publicly traded companies have a hard time asserting priorities other than financial performance because they nominally exist solely to "enhance share holder value". Change starts with more enlightened (and useful) financial tools.

"Return on Attention" seems to be one measurement ripe for specification and standardization. It would be welcomed (at least outside the advertising and marketing worlds) because it's easily analyzed retrospectively and prospectively from actual numbers or budgets. If it's sufficiently basic formula (relating time-investments plus actual expenditures, versus different qualities and quantities of interaction) it could shape future annual reports and prospecti in very positive ways for shareholders.

This creates a feedback loop: As management and staff gain newly-measurable market traction by using their passions to reach outside the firm and connect with their industry (customers, suppliers, fans and investors) in new ways, investors will be able to see something tangible, a form of "capital" related directly to the flow of information (as opposed to internal stocks). That's powerful stuff.

It's a different kind of measurement, but in fact it's certainly easy to imagine looking at this particular case. You can quantify Quantity of Interactions weighted with scalar of Quality of Interactions and relate to time and cash invested in the bad idea, plus negative response and damage control. The new program or contest is something else, and get's it's own "ROA", while collectively it would be simple to use Google to do the same for an entire company. Scalable and granular measurement! Better yet, it's as useful for forensically looking at things already done, as it is for providing real-time feedback, and forward-looking budgets. By having a way to look back meaningfully, you can predict these disasters, and see the long term damage to brand before you try something like this as a stunt. That's kind of my point: I think the damage or benefit of the Gap's logo launch is knowable and measurable. With that measurement we could know whether it's brilliant or foolish, regardless of intent.

I realize there are many more dimensions to look at, but a useful measure like this would shape investment as much as management and operations. More tools, fewer guesses and proclamations. This is knowable.

Re: Why WikiLeaks Matters More (And Less) than You Think

Dave Davis — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 07:54:44 -0000

I'm in complete agreement that the GDP is an institution in need of reinvention. I also agree transparency is a positive value not well served by existing institutions. While I understand the attraction and appeal of continuously updated earnings in real time, we lack the tools and instincts to apply such data. Such a platform would be inherently unstable, and make long term strategy difficult if not impossible to deploy, as speculators and day-traders work out abstract schemes and plays to extract value before companies mature. You're proposing a more chaotic market, with an additional set of triggers for booms and busts.

GDP should be replaced, just not by another ticker. Why not bake the "ticker" into the formulae used to calculate value? Rather than reporting earnings moment by moment, we might report "value" over time (measure how retained value and acquired knowledge is rising or falling during a reporting period)? To be more concrete, the principle of the aesthetics of data can be applied. First let's acknowledge that all data has value, but we cannot know that value at the time the data is created. Second, let's recognize that with data "more is more" since data begets data. Depth and density are positive characteristics of modern business. "Value" in knowledge is transient and bound by application – use it or lose it applies. Therefore we should quantify both how much unique data a company generates, and how quickly and efficiently that knowledge is applied, alongside it's cash flow.

And speaking of cash flow, far as real time financial performance, I'd argue a pure cash flow data in the abstract could and probably should be delivered in real time. Forget earnings, which can be geeged and massaged, show us the money! The flows of cash are a far more useful real time measure of a company's health and performance than it's ROI, which is rarely a static number itself. Rather than keeping us addicted to tickers, pull us into more complex equation that's less granular and more fluid to remove the motivation for instinctive, knee-jerk moves that drive booms and busts. An on-going cash-flow metric tells us far more than a simple balance sheet and P&L at the street level. Imagine it's power embedded in GDP; describing the Federal budget as flowing streams of subsidy and investment reshapes our perspective on spending at macro and micro levels.

A good metric allows investors to look past short term disruptions and set backs, and weigh the underlying value against returns, realized and potential. It must provide motivation to stick with a company over time, while generating constant pressure on management to deliver on potential. It should be resistant to short term speculation – rather than encouraging short term investors to jump on Apple just before they launch the next iPad, encourage long term investors to bet on it's development. Profits should come from operating revenues, not equity trades.

I'm glad you're getting down to imagineering new metrics. Why not use this blog to explore this in greater depth? It seems to me that dialog and input from a forum could advance this faster than manifestos and vision statements.

Re: The Economic Legacy of Ebenezer Scrooge

Dave Davis — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 11:34:08 -0000

Your equation of "self-love" to "happiness" doesn't hold water. No matter how I read his statement or expand it's context, at best Smith is talking about something like self-awareness (generally a healthy thing), at worst narcissism. More classically this is aka "enlightened self interest." Enlightened or not, existential struggles (the stuff of a butcher or baker or brewer's enterprise in Adam Smith's time) bear little resemblance to any definition of happiness I'm aware of.

If you're suggesting utility of "fulfillment of self-interest" as part of a definition for happiness, just say that. It's more accurate and will meet less resistance in formulating useful metrics than squishy words like "happiness". Then, if you must reference Smith you can quantify "self love" in a way that references job satisfaction. But in that context, you're warping metrics in a somewhat tortured manner, if you hope to replace GDP. "Job satisfaction" is difficult to quantify across a population, and in spite of Britain's efforts, not necessarily useful to the task at hand.

When Smith states "we address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love" he's specifically EXCLUDING humanistic metrics, implicitly rejecting moralistic appeals. Is happiness not a large portion of our humanity, and was happiness not explicitly presented as a desired state, in our Declaration of Independence? In Smith's day, his audience couldn't reach your conclusion. You torture language to get there today.

Therefore if we hope to measure appeals to "self love" as you suggest, we should focus on awareness of needs, and relative success in meeting objectively positive needs. Do you eat enough, and what is the quality of the food you can afford (e.g. does it make you unhealthy)? Are you warm, and is your heat source both sustainable and non-destructive of your environment? Do you have more or less leisure time, and something meaningful or productive to do with it? While these might well be components of some broader measure of happiness, they're specifically the kinds of things a modern Adam Smith might consider "self love".

Re: The Economic Legacy of Ebenezer Scrooge

Dave Davis — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:34:06 -0000

Well, actually it's an old pagan Roman holiday, co-opted by the newly minted Holy Roman Empire as part of a major rebranding.

Jesus of the Bible was not born in December (unless the stuff about stars and festivals is all made up), and generally didn't celebrate any pagan holidays to advance political agendas and reinvigorate the empire that eventually crucified him. He had a lot of great ideas, and certainly advocated positive values. I'm not so sure he'd have embraced the notion of a Church inventing a holy day from whole cloth, to coincide with pagan festivals and adopting pagan rites (including erecting totems like "christmas trees" which are explicitly prohibited in the religion Jesus actually practiced in life). There's little "christianity" in the Winter Solstice celebration known as Christmas, especially in our times. The very notion of a "Black Friday" of economic salvation is foreign to his revelation.

But sure, the values work and provide answers, whatever the season... Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men is certainly a worthy goal inspired by them.

Re: The Economic Legacy of Ebenezer Scrooge

Dave Davis — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 09:05:59 -0000

Sure... or maybe a closer analogy today would be "self esteem"? I agree more abstract definitions are appealing and not inconsistent with Smith's writing.

Re: The Shape of the Meaning Organization

Dave Davis — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:36:31 -0000

I'm trying hard not to sound like a broken record, but as I suffer through the annual End of Year shareholder publication hassles, assembling our balance sheet, P&Ls, and operating plan, my usual question stands unanswered: How do we get there from here?

My company actually looks a lot like Mr. Haque describes, and has from the outset. As it's leader, I'm charged with communicating why we're investing for the long term to my shareholders, in a coherent way. While I can supply editorial insight, there are simply no tools available to expose any benefits for waiting to profit in a sustainable way. Indeed, sustainability is hard to advance as a value. From the outset these concepts survive on my good name and the value of my personal judgment. Even The Power of Pull fails to deliver meaningful metrics to rationalize change.

How do you achieve change without a testable proposition, or milestones? I'm not sure you can. I'm not sure your book contains any more clarity, so at this point all of this is "thought leadership" at very best. But with no tangible measures or financial instruments to value "outcomes", it's absurd to ask stakeholders (not just shareholders, but communities, customers and employees) to gamble their livelihoods on unproven memes and good intentions. Realistically the sum of the posts on this blog add up to that and no more.

The Power of Pull provides a good strategic and tactical manual for 21C companies to develop their business, and add more conventional value. There's no shortage of this work, which this blog also covers well. Unfortunately you're expecting far too much of stakeholders in a post like this one. A CEO attempting to implement your ideas would be fired or laughed out of the boardroom, absent a pro forma or other financial projection to provide motives. In a publicly traded company, it might even be flatly ILLEGAL to advocate such an organization, depending on it's governance and structure.

You type a good game. But I still see no evidence of anyone taking on the hard work, no reinvention of metrics to back up the grand ideas. It's beyond disappointing, since this isn't a new challenge (nor are these memes particularly new at this point in time). Capitalism 2.0 increasingly appears to be vaporware, lacking any financial or economic rationale or infrastructure. I personally believe a shift is inevitable, but I'm losing faith in it's champion's ability to advance a positive vision. Absent that work, things will trend towards the worst and meanest practices before anything positive takes root. You're really losing the war by posting unsupported manifestos. Step up the game, and get concrete.

Re: Ten Things You're Not Allowed to Say at Davos

Dave Davis — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 12:49:17 -0000

I'm sorry, but I see a list of truisms, with very little in the way of useful or actionable items. At this late date, it's weak to simply shoot at straw men, and flail away at symptoms without facing the disease: a lack of functional tools to put your best ideas into action, and empower 21C entrepreneurs to enact real change.

The Power of Pull is a great overview, designed to convince the Davos-qualified crowd that change can be a good thing. It fails because it never codifies it's findings, and at best provides a call to action, minus a roadmap or a clue to sell your Board of Directors on plans of your own. I managed to extract a useful worksheet from it's pages, to prospectively examine our own projects, but the authors are really talking to a different audience. It's aimed at F500 execs, willing to be "change agents" within existing structures, not entrepreneurs or difference-makers already in the trenches. Mr. Haque's posts are trending along similar lines, which is a shame, since change rarely comes from reformed losers out of desperation.

The problem in this post is tone and content are not only negative, but unactionable. For anyone interested in action, there's no positive support. It's a list of jingos, assailing a group increasingly irrelevant to facts on the ground.

The lessons of Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan and Egypt keep going unlearned and remain ignored. Yet they apply as much to business as government: Consumers, like citizens, eventually reach their fill and rebel. Once the tipping point is crossed, you can forget orderly transitions or appeasements, the game is over. The mob will rule, and clean house, generally botching the job, and replacing the status quo with something at least as bad. For reasons well outlined by Mr. Haque and the Deloitte Edgers, we're rapidly approaching such a tipping point economically. Without economic instruments to convince today's bosses to get ahead of the mob out of enlightened self interest, the unenlighted selfish rule of the mob will impose it's own order.

Negative, whining pieces like this waste time. Your ideas are best advanced by considering new parameters for the Excel sheets you mock. The truth is the most beloved music ever performed or written is easily contained and delivered via a spreadsheet, without losing it's emotive capacity (we call those spread sheets "CDs" and if you like them complex, MP3s). It's not terribly difficult to identify the missing pieces, and map out an incremental path to adoption of a new kind of accounting for Capitalism 2.0, through reform of balance sheets first, and eventually income statements (P&Ls etc). We not only can, but MUST create new tools that quantify and value concepts like sustainability, brand equity, attention and awareness alongside cash value. I know that's hard work. But if it's not done, the mob will assert it's own values sooner or later.

Re: Ten Things You're Not Allowed to Say at Davos

Dave Davis — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 10:42:29 -0000

I'd argue that Egypt (and today Jordan) highlight the problem with closing these revolving doors. When a system runs for as long as this has gone on uninterrupted, unhealthy codependencies develop. Just as the US cannot throw Mubarak under the bus and hope to maintain relationships with other despot/clients, politicians aren't positioned to easily dispose of their despotic clients and still get re-elected. They require endless pools of money to stay in power, and must play along to fill their pools. Further, since the laws themselves are written by the lobbyists who choose our politicians (they don't pick winners, rather they annoint eligible candidates), even "voting the rascals out" may not change things. For example all of the oil leases signed and approved by Bush appointees will remain in force indefinitely - no legislation can unring those terrible bells (universally bad deals cut by corrupt regulators who came from the industry they regulate, then partied and slept with the regulatees, before returning to good jobs in industry). No amount of "will power" can fix this problem, any more than "will power" can un-pay billions shovelled to Halliburton, and billions more we're contractually obligated to pay later. All water under bridge.

The key to reforming the Davos crowd is Mr. Haque's thesis: We must reform the institutions of capitalism, applying what we've learned. Mr. Haque's done a terrific job defining the shape of this new capitalism, and provides seeds for reform, but stops short of developing tools. Manifestos are not tools, they're assertions. Even successful ones rarely predict or shape reality (see: Marx et al, vs. reality in China, Cuba and USSR). OTOH Newton's Calculus and Pythagoras' geometry launched revolutions.

Do you really want to see a Capitalism 2.0? Then show us a new balance sheet. Give investors and politicos a yardstick to measure "good" alongside "goods", and give companies appropriately measured credit for mind-share, attention and sustainable initiatives. Simple tools that extend our perception of things that matter will drive the kind of value (thick!) that Mr. Haque advocates.

Without these tools, change simply cannot happen. It would be unethical, maybe illegal, for a CEO to chase "thick value" when there's low-hanging thin value in hand. We will continue richly rewarding zombiexecutives, and starving the more enlightened. That's because it's impossible to make a business argument in favor of long-term investments where short term profits are easily available. We're all slaves to our financials, and our financial reports fail to present a coherent, holistic perspective. For example the balance sheet of flailing EMI doesn't accurately present the value of it's assets, while on-going industry collapse makes it's P&L useless for budgeting and projections. As a result, even the liquidation of this bankrupt institution is proving difficult, if not impossible. These are failures in our tools, not our economy.

Re: Ten Things You're Not Allowed to Say at Davos

Dave Davis — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:52:02 -0000

Thanks, Mr. Jones. ;) That's a fine, valid distinction.

I agree that leadership is important, and am thankful for Mr. Haque's work to that end. Ingenuity in defining the shape of this new prosperity is sorely lacking however, and honestly I don't see anyone willing or able to take on the math needed to make Haque's excellent ideas tangible.

I confess to frustration that we're still talking in outlines, when we know the shape of many challenges and solutions. Financials companies use to measure progress and make plans are incompatible with the changes Mr. Haque advocates. OTOH, a useful, powerful metric with relevance to forecasts and milestones could change markets almost overnight. Companies realizing profit from thick value can obsolete thin value faster than a 1,000,000 essays on 1,000,000 blogs. Or we can talk all day.

Re: The Capitalist's Paradox

Dave Davis — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 08:43:35 -0000

Mr. Haque, I accept your hypothesis, even if I don't agree with many of your examples/bullets: broad Institutional change is needed. But I'm troubled by the definitions and framing of your solution.

When you ask readers to describe what they do in 3 words, I wonder if that's even possible in many fields. For instance entertainment: Only if you dispense with grammer and resort to txting conventions can you describe the role of a member of a movie crew, or a roadie or bouncer on a big tour. At best, your description will be oblique (help people dance), at worst seemingly too mundane to mention (carry heavy boxes), and in all cases inaccurate. Worst of all, in addition to the value being subjective, meaning and worth aren't necessarily implied. Even so, people enjoy movies and concerts. But like pop and SUVs, entertainment can be empty or even anti-social (Justin Bieber, Hamburglar, Anarchist's Handbook, etc). So help a reader out...

What are you getting at by this 3-word reduction, and how does this exercise help change institutions, or the world? While it's hard for many individuals to respond at all, I bet many marketing depts could come up with 3 words to suggest any number of seemingly positive or useful outcomes at the core of their enterprise. For instance Walmart and McDonalds can honestly claim the "stretch customers budgets" and "feed family cheap" alongside ye olde "enhance shareholder value." So how can this question possibly advance change when it so easily supports the status quo?

And on the other side, could you give us some examples focused on radical innovators? I don't buy "don't be evil" as Google's raison d'etre, any more than they're about "finding web-links easier" at this stage, they seem to be focused on "leasing more eyeballs". Lady Gaga has a very positive, uplifting message and radically different business model than her predecessors Cher, Madonna and Diana Ross; she's world changing in some respects, but her impact can't be reduced to 3 words. Same is true of Radiohead, CurrentTV, and Banksy. How would their contributions be described? In a strict physical sense, how does this paradigm handle ephemeral versus tangible outcomes, in terms of "value"?

Re: The Capitalist's Paradox

Dave Davis — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 10:43:11 -0000

While there are clear limits and issues with the application of physics to the chaotic problems within culture, the broad analysis makes some sense and is supported by events. I generally agree with your conclusions.

To the specifics, I'd suggest we may already be facing the staggering planetary disruption you describe, specifically access to oil, and how we compensate a population for stripping their non-renewable resources. Oilculture is nothing like agriculture or infoculture; its a commodity that's inherently zero sum, around which our increasingly fluid, non-zero sum culture is built.

While the pace of change may vary with the wealth and investment of the culture-under-change, it's direction and necessity are mostly set. Wisconsin simply shows we can afford slower change than Egypt, due to circumstances. But implied in Wisconsin is the inability of either unions or government to respond to a specific challenge in a coherent way. Unions are abandoning their principles a little quicker, but the Republican governor's likely consigned himself and his party to a single term by over-playing a weak hand, and missing the opportunity to do something more meaningful. Had he taken his economic gains, and simply sun-set the collective bargaining limitations like Congress did with the Bush tax cuts, he may have gotten to keep them if things worked out as he claims (favorably for voters, fairly for workers). Hardball is the bad-old way. By imitating Mubarek, Ghaddafi and Bush, Walker's crapped his own bed and will share their fates, albeit in a painful, slow motion dance, like the ending of Bonnie and Clyde, that seems to go on forever. It's already started with his punking - he's been stripped of all semblance of good will, and can no longer be seen as anything more than a cheap partisan hack. His party will pay the toll with him, probably dooming Republican candidates in Wisconsin for decades to come. In my state, Gov. Kasich's similarly shown his stripes and proven himself a bad actor, mostly interested in grabbing power. My point: As recently as 2004 Americans celebrated and rewarded this behavior, re-electing W after he doubled down on unsustainable ideas and demonstrated he was either insane, stupid or venal by refusing to admit fallability or errors. By 2008, that same phony confidence was rejected in a blow out. 2010 could be seen as a similar judgment on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's hard-balling. Unless Boehner figures this out, he's as doomed as the rest of his cohort.

Re: The United States of Charlie Sheen

Dave Davis — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:31:35 -0000

Interesting thought piece, Mr. Haque. It raises a question your new book, The New Capitalist Manifesto opened for me last night: If we're moving away from hunting and towards ark-management as you propose, maybe it's not so wise to indict "zero sum" thinking. For me this is somewhat radical, as I believe our new economy is increasingly driven by non-zero sum products and services.

The disconnect here is more social than rational. People behave differently when they're working with precious materials or cargos, versus free or cheap stuff. The very scarcity expressed through pricing alters our approach to goods (and "bads") entirely. Oddly the owner of a Lamborghini is more tolerant of mechanical failure than the owner of a Tercel, yet the Lamborghini owner is more likely aware of what makes his machine special and unique. The Lambo owner will watch his mileage and stay up with maintenance, while a used Cavalier buyer is less likely to care. In short, we're more likely to "shepherd" or "curate" precious possessions. The more precious the good the more attention and care it receives.

To return to your analogy, Charlie Sheen can convert his infamy to cash to a large extent, and as you note this may be a metaphor for our products in our zombieconomy. The problem is his attitude and drama are painfully familiar and NOT rare, but increasingly common, so they shouldn't be gaining traction or value. This supports your meme in that he represents a "lowest common denominator" product. But it's unclear how this fits into any market theory, including yours. Sure, we're overvaluing a "bad", but at the same time none of the attention is flattering or positive, so the nature of that value is unclear. We're even over-valuing some goods: In consuming this spectacle we over-value celibacy and sobriety, we over-value attention, we over-value media itself as a means of delivering useful or important information. In a sense all the tut-tutting over Mr. Sheen is evidence of gross hypocrisy and sanctimony.

I see little evidence in all of this that non-zero sum models or thinking are viable. At the same time, I wonder whether old fashioned zero-sum values and ideals might have promise. For instance, Mr. Sheen might benefit from recognizing his own mortality and the zero-sum limits implied. For instance, the media might benefit from recognizing actual broadcast air time is limited, just as audience time to watch shows is limited - All of YouTube is thus a zero-sum competition for attention. I don't see any area where non-zero sum thinking helps Mr. Sheen, his fans or his employers, while doubling down on inherent limitations looks very useful.

You're mixing metaphors too broadly here (and in your book). Mr. Sheen's fame is non-zero sum, and not positive, socially or economically. But his sobriety, talent, humanity and productivity are clearly zero sum resources. This conceptual mashup works against your larger points, because the goods and bads are not aligned with your thesis. It's a one-liner, at best, that takes us farther from clarity.

Re: Seven Problems a Recovery Won't Fix

Dave Davis — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:15:58 -0000

I'm glad to see you're starting to focus on the mechanics of the solutions: a need for new financials, from GDP to P&Ls, balance sheets etc is the only rational "first step" available at this point. The Powers That Be are so deeply invested in the status quo that even upsetting a cart of rotten apples is too radical to imagine. The devolution of our educational system has created an electorate that craves cognitive dissonance, to drown out their own misery. There are no fair brokers or reasonable players left in the game formerly known as "capitalism".

For Capitalism 2.0 to take root, the Usual Suspects will have to be tricked into acting in their own best interests. Pointy-headed educated "elites" (anyone with more than a high school education, and a well-paying job) can opine on blogs all day long, but change requires tools. Tools that are, well, different from what we've been using. GDP, in the US at least, is essentially a political metric, not an economic one, so that's the natural place to start - extract the politics, insert outcomes and consequences, alongside financial performance. Such revised GDP methods could reveal the interconnections between policy and commerce.

Likewise, if economists were to provide business with a better P&L that unmasked hidden costs, and allowed managers to plot more sustainable courses, or even just did a better job predicting outcomes than the current format, smart companies would use them out of enlightened self interest. See, the problem is the "good guys" are out-gunned, unarmed really versus the sharks and scammers out there addicted to business as usual. Even if a publicly traded company WANTS to move forward, it's shackled in the past by SEC rules dictating narrow, common views.

I'll note that my company HAS applied some of this, with no help or support from the champions of Capitalism 2.0. We've found real advantage by focusing on outcomes rather than income, but lacking tools it's difficult to sustain the advantage. If anyone builds it (better financial tools), we'll come.

This is stuff that's changeable, with something less than an act of congress, or social revolution. If wonks and "elites" can devise something that makes more money for the Usual Suspects by providing more/better data, it has a good chance of being adopted. First as tools inside enlightened or rational companies (like P&G, Google, even Walmart), eventually rolled into a new normal, as the bad-oldies go under, unable to compete with more stable players.

Unless you get serious about building these tools, the picture will remain bleak and hopeless. Physician, heal thyself, and stop staring at your shoes. Get to the heavy lifting, or start advocating for business practice and standards reform if you're unwilling or unable to imagine better balance sheets.

Re: Seven Problems a Recovery Won't Fix

Dave Davis — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 09:14:13 -0000

I'm not so sure of that, because I believe younger people (historically and presently) don't see the same obstacles, and more important, in the US they can look around at the Zuckerburgs, the Google twins, Steve Jobs, Elon Musks and realize that "world-changing" isn't an impossible dream. It's mostly a conceit of youth, but in an age where words can literally be transcoded as material reality via code it's closer to reality than ever before.

What we're seeing broadly as you and others note, is the resistance to change from the recipients of the inherently unfair largess of tradition. This isn't new or surprising either. What IS new in recent times is the reversal of educational achievements that have been progressing since the enlightenment. People really are too dumb to recognize or respond to their own self interest in an enlightened way. No longer possible. The haves intentionally damaged the educational system, as they simultaneously poisoned debate by a A)substituting non-fact faith based truisms for truths in the most convenient ways imagineable, and B)replaced the core methods of rationalism with a pseudo-democracy of ideas. In short, the most popular idea is true, wikipedia style, even when it is not (Stephen Colbert is the best example of both sides of this cynical manipulation). It's double-speak incarnate: Cutting taxes always increases revenue (even if it has never happened). Oil is not running out (even if easy oil's gone and unsustainable formats are all that remain). The climate is not changing, and even if it is there's no human component to the change or solution to it's effects (even if we're running out of time to construct defenses, and squandering opportunities to rebuild wetlands with historic floods). Jesus rode on dinosaurs when he and his dad made the world 6000 years ago (even though we have rocks 1,000,000X older and dinosaurs vanished 1000X farther back than Jesus). Denial and lies are easily sold to gullible people, primarily educated in the trained-greed of consumerism and Wall Street of Professor Gecko.

Re: Seven Problems a Recovery Won't Fix

Dave Davis — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:15:52 -0000

I agree with your points and was mostly responding to Jonathan in support thereof... A missing element in any "enlightenment", and a step towards solution is Umair's concept of 21st century "goods" as "betters". Example: we have marvelous electric engine technology, and understand there are tangible benefits to smaller, lighter cars. Yet the media celebrates flexfuel or hybrid SUVs as some sort of breakthrough - just another "good", slightly cheaper to operate, more expensive to buy, but no more sustainable. True "betters" are sometimes mentioned, but rarely embraced.

Second and equally critical, those of us trying to run businesses require "Outcome Statements" to replace "Income Statements" for decision-makers and key stakeholders. Income Statements are a fundamental tool to expose wishful thinking and unrealistic strategies. Outcome Statements would clearly identify and quantify unsustainable propositions, connections and network dependencies, and market-changing impacts.

To move people away from being purely consumers requires a real enlightenment. The truth is, bad actors like Bank of America could be put out of our misery if depositors left voluntarily, and mortgagees ceased making payments en masse at the same time; it's victims don't require regulators and laws to bring them to heel, they can crush them on thier own, armed with nothing more than information (by what date should depositors be gone, and when do the victims stop making payments?). Conversely BP's attitude towards it's spill was adjusted by sales at the pumps and bad PR, not fear of the Justice dept. When we understand we're not merely consumers of goods, but always partners in an economic conversation, we realize safety in numbers, and the benefits of dialog. As thing stand, brands mostly address customers in monologue.

Re: Was Marx Right?

Dave Davis — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 08:52:21 -0000

The breathless defenses of the status quo, driven by mindless fear of intellectual rigor (and science) are on display in many comments here. The non-ironic demonstrations of Marx' "False Consciousness" are stunning examples of why we've lost even the hope of a common wheal. Call me Alienated! ;)

Re: MidPoint Music Festival: live streaming indie bands

Dave Davis — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:48:55 -0000

the most useful view more me has been "soon"! ;)

Re: The Economic Roots of Your Life Crisis

Dave Davis — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:21:21 -0000

I think the crisis (and response) are well summarized by this recent heresy vs conventional wisdom: http://www.newyorker.com/ta...

It's a great example of The Anti-Walmart Principle (continuously _increase_ value of products arithmetically, while raising prices incrementally; WalMart's built on coercing suppliers to continuously decrease value in order to achieve lower prices) at work. Apple is another example, in a company much larger than Walmart. Cheaper ≠ Better, even (maybe especially?!) for shareholders.

Re: Overthrow Yourself

Dave Davis — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:48:10 -0000

It's very difficult to see how platitudes lead to betterness. Cheerleading has it's place, but if one has read and accepted the Economics of Human Betterness, what next? Anthems, sloganeering and manifestos are useful to convince people to make changes. But having convinced your audience (as the comments above mine attest), it appears that you're dodging the hard work and heavy lifting required to actually turn the corner.

My company is built on your principles. We're barely 3 years old and have turned a profit, but keeping staff and investors aligned towards "betterness" gets harder year after year because we lack the metrics and tools to demonstrate progress and motivate commitment to these ideas. The last few posts seem to be aimed at convincing people of something fairly intuitive, and entirely strategic. To direct real change and move forward will require practical tools and tactics. Mr. Haque makes a great case that GDP misses the point, redefines our semantics and suggests some "balance sheet" metric models, but never offers tools we can use.

Down in the trenches actually doing the things you talk about feels very lonely, and is bluntly terrifying. We're on islands separated by oceans of nonsense, navigating on unstable canoes full of past baggage. Your work helps us decide which bags to carry, but offer little support for building stable vessels. I'm not an economist or even an accountant, yet I must not just reinvent our industry and product models, I must also reinvent our financials, in a way that's legal and enlightening. It's overwhelming and risky enterprise. Over time the lack of benchmarks and conventional metrics undermines the credibility of positive changes we've already worked through. You start to sound crazy, even when you're succeeding.

You're preaching to the converted here. Can you give us something more tangible than anthems and platitudes? Some tools to help us sell investors, bosses and skeptics perhaps? What do the financials of a 21st Century New Capitalist look like? You've dismissed the income statement, suggested changes for the balance sheet, but you never offer alternatives or tools! I've bought, read and studied your books... you're full of great ideas and sound strategies, but lacking modern financials no one can credibly implement them. I'm begging you, Mr. Haque: Create or suggest tools to advance the conversation beyond rhetoric, and repeating the same arguments.