I read many blogs throughout the week and The Harvard Business Review or hbr.com has several that I personally like. They tend to be a length that is easily consumable and yet have enough of an insight to make you think. Well, the other day Umair Haque authored an entry that I wish I wrote. It’s titled Four Rules for Constructive Competition and is set in 2015.
Mr. Haque highlights a very real possibility, if the US federal government can’t get out of its own way, particularly as it pertains to finance and health care, then foreign enterprises will start to offer the people better deals. Here is an excerpt, but I recommend reading the entire post (it won’t take long):
John Maynard Keynes once famously said:“For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and toevery one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful andfair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for alittle longer still.”
Lord Keynes, your century’s up. 20th century competition hinged onthe idea that unbridled greed, naked self-interest, and coercion werethe essential drivers of growth. But last year’s market collapsedemonstrated the fundamental incompatibility of those ideas with aninterdependent world.
For the next hundred years, we must say to ourselves: “fair is fair,and foul is foul. Avarice and usury are yesterday’s fallen idols, andpeace, equity, and meaning are our new gods. How much can we change the world radically for the better?”
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Higher-order innovation, not unnovation.In the 21st century, even a mandate from the US government isn’t goingto be enough to protect the profit margins of health care monopolists.
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Ethics, not extraction. Think lobbying’s awful — but smart? Think again. Lobbying’s not just ethically questionable; it’s also strategically self-destructive… Why has lobbying backfired on all these moribund industries? Becauseasking to be insulated from competition saps incentives for innovation— and sharpens incentives for disruption…
Working Thoughts 