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A good
way to read this book is to read the cover and then go to page 318.
There begins the chapter titled 'Conceptualising The New Enterprise
Logic', which lists eleven metaprinciples of 'distributed capitalism'-as
against the earlier command-and-control era of managerial capitalism-where
individuals whose consumption is now 'individuated' get 'deep support'.
Each metaprinciple is fairly radical.
All enterprises are part of a federation, which
can change dynamically and is connected using a digital backbone.
Time constrained consumers will be supported by advocates who provide
deep support, ensuring that internet self-service models do not
eat into a lot of consumer time. The authors take an imaginary couple,
Lillian and Carlos Aceros, and trace their activities as David,
their very human advocate, takes care of their needs. This is like
private banking for all services, and more importantly for everyone.
It is quite a graphic description of what future services could
look like.
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The Support Economy
By Shoshana Zuboff & James Maxmin
Allen Lane
Price: Rs 1,389.12
PP: 458
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The authors claim that the new enterprise structure
is as radical as the Copernican inversion. The way they describe
it, it well could be. For example, cash flow is released into the
federation once a consumer pays for his 'experience' and it then
gets distributed to the different participants in the federation.
Not only is it real-time, it is transparent as well.
Where are these federations going to come from?
They could be new structures. Or existing companies like ups that
could connect an insurance company, for instance, to its network.
Well, like the authors say, the new capitalism doesn't come with
an instruction manual. It will evolve.
As you read on, you realise that this is a
managerial vision of the 'web services world' that technology vendors
like Sun and Microsoft (the .net architecture) have been talking
about all along. If you cancel an airline ticket, your corresponding
hotel booking will get altered. David, the advocate, uses a web
services backbone, but consults his consumers about their choices.
The first three parts of the book dwell on
how the current enterprise structure, managerial capitalism, was
designed for the industrial age of mass production, and how it fails
customers (who are 'segmented' and subjected to pseudo intimacy)
and employees (who have to leave their identity at the door when
they get to work). Isn't all this a truism by now? But the husband
and wife team of authors Shoshana Zuboff and James Maxmin bring
in both a lot of research and practical experience-Zuboff is a professor
at Harvard Business School and her husband Maxmin was the CEO of
Volvo, UK, and is a board member in several companies.
The authors are widely read and have a wide
range of experience; they draw parallels from math, science and
nature. "The current organisational structure is like Euclidean
linear geometry. Reduce complexity to simple lines. While the reality
is like fractal geometry...". The authors also look at the
history of enterprise, economics and sociology together to understand
different management paradigms of the past. Very useful, if you're
teaching or researching, or just have a lot of time.
The authors and their editors, however, have
very little faith in their readers' ability to comprehend. Every
point is enumerated, highlighted, reiterated, stressed and emphasised.
A little annoying. The authors should take a cue from their own
book, and keep in mind that today's consumers are time constrained.
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Alexander
The Great's Art Of Strategy
By Partha Bose
Viking
Price: Rs 395
PP: 303
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There
are hardbacks and paperbacks. And then there are thinkbacks-of which
this 395-pager is particularly riveting. Tracing all wisdom back
to the Greeks is typical to Western intellectual custom. But this
book is refreshing in its treatment, and in a sense, even its gestalt.
The former editor-in-chief of McKinsey Quarterly, Partha Bose, succeeds
in inspiring wonder at how much our current notion of 'strategy'
owes to Alexander, if not in prompting a nod to the conqueror's
being "the greatest strategist who ever lived".
That Aristotle-he of the 'First Cause'-pressed
the young man's mind to test hypotheses, challenge assumptions,
synthesise information and lead via intellect, gives the story its
forceful guru-shishya theme. Bose is fair to Alexander's guru, "the
'facts' guy" (though not, alas, to his opponents Demosthenes
and Darius), and would almost have you think of Sun-Tzu, Xenophon
and Clausewitz as redundant under his battle leadership.
The author describes battle strategies vividly
enough to match any Abraham Eraly book. Alexander emerges most spectacularly
from Gaugamela, in Babylon, where he feigns falling into a head-on
trap, only to suddenly re-order his army into an oblique pattern,
storm Darius' larger-but-confused army, and then lead an arrow cavalry
formation searing through to its core.
Of the modern-day strategy analogies that punctuate
the book's biographical narrative, Alexander's passion for local
intelligence (Unilever) and elaborate Jhelum-crossing deceit (Normandy)
are quite convincing; his choice of battlefields (smalltown Wal-Mart)
and leveraging of Trojan mythology (hp's garage) less so.
Yet, for all his genius, chivalry and post-conquest
attempts at cross-cultural integration, Alexander failed miserably
as an empire unifier. In his megalomania, he failed his guru too.
His motivational methods were far from universalist, and he died
in 323 BC-only 32-a tragic figure, unabashedly keen to have his
subjects genuflect before him.
-Aresh Shirali
 Less
Is More
By Jason Jennings
Penguin
Price: 920
PP: 248
A call to productivity action from the man who grew famous saying
it's the fast who eat the slow, not the big who eat the small.
 Walking
The Talk
Charles O. Holliday, Jr., Stephan Schmidheiny & Philip Watts
Greenleaf Publishing
PP: 288
Chiefs of Dupont, Shell and Anova on
sustainable development-and making business work for everybody.
It's a strategic issue, they argue.
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