Economic systems

Two years after the financial crisis began, the business community and the broader public are still wrestling with two fundamental questions about capitalism that should help to orient and shape how we think about business ethics. Last week, I discussed the first of these questions: How much faith should we have in capitalism? This week, […]

While the global financial meltdown and its aftershocks have unleashed a flood of indignation, condemnation, and protest upon Wall Street, the crisis has exposed a deeper distrust and implacable resentment of capitalism itself. Capitalism might be the greatest engine of prosperity and progress ever devised, but in recent years, individuals and communities have grown increasingly […]

Japan is organized in a fundamentally different way from the economies of the rest of the industrialized world. It is a nation girded by cartels and bound...

Businesses already know how to prevent tragic fires in factories; they just have to be willing to make the investment.

Dear WSJ Editorial Board, Ashton Kutcher once famously said: “Dude, where’s my car?” I have a feeling what you’ve really been saying lately is: “Dude, where’s my Capitalism 1.0?” “Americans are streaming back into auto showrooms, and one reason is the “cash for clunkers” subsidy…This is crackpot economics. The subsidy won’t add to net national […]

Market capitalism, a system that has proven to be a remarkable engine of wealth creation, is poised for a breakdown. That sounds dire, and it is. Increasing...

One of The Economist‘s weekly cartoons showed a bazaar full of T-shirts, mugs, and banners emblazoned with the slogan “Capitalism Is Dead!” A stockbroker surveys the many customers buying this sentiment in its many forms and remarks, “I think I’ve found a growth market!” That was in October of 2008. But recent volatility in the […]

Over the past year, we’ve been researching a book on how capitalism will evolve now that its center of gravity is moving away from mature, western economies. Looking around the world for companies that hint at capitalism’s next phase, we’ve tended to focus on businesses that an economist would say belong to an “emerging” stage […]

In the few years since the financial crisis of 2008 hit us where it hurts, the calls for the “end of capitalism” have rung out from the streets and halls of power alike. We’ve witnessed a lot of hand-wringing and high-level conversation, and some serious approach to reform at the national and organizational level. As […]

If Kindles could groan under the weight of books on a certain subject, mine would be starting to grumble about the bytes consumed with the subject of re-inventing capitalism. And the flow of words is not likely to abate in the coming months, as articles on the need for a more holistic model of capitalism […]

As the Western economies gradually recover from the recession, there is much public debate going on in New York, Paris, and London as to whether the traditional capitalist model we are used to is able to bring back sustainable growth. There is no doubt that the capitalist system underpinning Western societies is troubled, as more […]

To usher in the new year, an exciting occasion: my new book, The New Capitalist Manifesto, has been published by HBR. I'd like to extend a warm thank...

“The notion that capitalists should allow communists to buy their companies is, some argue, taking economic liberalism to an absurd extreme. But that is just what they should do, for the spread of Chinese capital should bring benefits to its recipients, and the world as a whole.” — “China buys up the world,” The Economist, […]

Start by identifying opportunities and priorities in their own organizations.

Three things have to happen in concert to heal the ailing American democratic capitalist system: Senior executives have to be helped out of a conflicted state in which they know they are living inauthentic business lives but are both too scared of the capital markets and too addicted to stock-based compensation to change by themselves. […]

Out of the great crisis, a mega-imperative: building a capitalism fit for a roiling, seething 21st century, one that’s an evolutionary leap beyond its industrial era predecessor. Here’s how the unlikeliest of revolutionaries, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has put it: “Our system was not designed to sustain a shock, a crisis of this magnitude…capitalism will […]

They should emphasize the importance of democracy and good government.

But it’s unevenly distributed.

Capitalism was born in Europe. But for nearly half a century, its most vigorous offshoots have flourished in the United States and Japan, while our economic performance has been lackluster. Or so the familiar litany goes. Despite our venerable commercial achievements—and the great European thinkers who defined the very institutions of capitalism—the continent that dominated […]