Book Description
Listen to a short interview with Thomas McCraw
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane
Pan Am, Gimbel's, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland--all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is the price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. "Creative destruction," he said, is the driving force of capitalism.
Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as "the most sophisticated conservative" of the twentieth century, Schumpeter made his mark as the prophet of incessant change. His vision was stark: Nearly all businesses fail, victims of innovation by their competitors. Businesspeople ignore this lesson at their peril--to survive, they must be entrepreneurial and think strategically. Yet in Schumpeter's view, the general prosperity produced by the "capitalist engine" far outweighs the wreckage it leaves behind.
During a tumultuous life spanning two world wars, the Great Depression, and the early Cold War, Schumpeter reinvented himself many times. From boy wonder in turn-of-the-century Vienna to captivating Harvard professor, he was stalked by tragedy and haunted by the specter of his rival, John Maynard Keynes. By 1983--the centennial of the birth of both men--Forbes christened Schumpeter, not Keynes, the best navigator through the turbulent seas of globalization. Time has proved that assessment accurate.
Prophet of Innovation is also the private story of a man rescued repeatedly by women who loved him and put his well-being above their own. Without them, he would likely have perished, so fierce were the conflicts between his reason and his emotions. Drawing on all of Schumpeter's writings, including many intimate diaries and letters never before used, this biography paints the full portrait of a magnetic figure who aspired to become the world's greatest economist, lover, and horseman--and admitted to failure only with the horses.
Customer Reviews:
Important.......2007-06-23
Free markets are hard to explain. It is even harder to explain why companies must fail and be replaced by new ones. In the U.S. we mostly let that happen but in Europe they try and prevent it. It seems that this issue will become even more important as the world becomes 100% "flat" and competition becomes more intense. Developments in Asia will make the levels of creative destruction we have seen in the past look mild by comparison.
This book gives a great introduction to one of the great economic minds. His insights, although proven over and over, are still not accepted my many.
Review of McCraw's book on Schumpeter.......2007-05-31
I have been impressed by this book, which is a good mix of the 'history' of Joseph Schumpeter and his ideas and contributions to economics. I think the author has obtained a very good balance between trying to understand this great economist, and presenting his work to the informed lay-person. Economists and non-economists alike will find a lot here, which is very relevant to today (perhaps even more so to economists working in academia!). Some of Schumpeter's major works (like Business Cycles published in 1939) are not easy to digest; but this book brings out enough to capture the essentials. Overall, this is the best book on Schumpeter I have seen.
BEST WRITTEN RECENT BIOGRAPHY; BUT TENOUS WHEN IT MOVES FROM HISTORY TO ECONOMICS.......2007-05-01
Thomas McCraw is one of the best business historians in the world and with this output, late in his career (he is an emeritus professor at Harvard now), he can lay claim to being one of the best historians in the world, not just a business historian. It is hard to imagine a political biography in recent years that comes close to matching the lucid style, perfect prose, excellent quotes and commentary about life as this book.
The subject is one of the most famous economists of the twentieth century, someone who along with Frederick Hayek, Ludwig Mises and others from the Austrian School came to anchor the philosophical basis for the success of economic and political freedom. The book covers in detail the personal life of Schumpeter, including a lot of material not commonly available. His biography of the deaths of his daughter mother and wife within months is an excellent if tragic basis to delineate the first part of Schumpeter's life, which the author suggests made him an Enfant Terrible, from the second, which the author calls made him an adult. The final segment is his becoming a Sage. Peppered throughout the book are some of the best quotations from some of the most famous persons in history, including legendary poets, yet ones the reader would never have read before.
For all those reasons, Thomas McCraw has delivered a book that is filling like a all-you-can-eat buffet, yet with each dish of the same quality as fine dining. IT IS A TOUR DE FORCE.
Yet there is a contextual flaw which weighs down the narrative. From the very first pages it is clear that Thomas McCraw is attempting to also make a comparative evaluation of economic systems, a task that quickly appears tenous, and to do that while crowning Schumpeter as the king of economics, past and present, at which point the narrative makes one cringe. Here is why this brilliant history turns into tenous economic analysis.
Firstly, as Thomas McCraw's colleagues across the Charles River should tell him, Schumpeter was his best not so much as a pure AUstrian-School economist but as a chronicler of the economy, almost a contemporary historian of the subject. In that sense he shared much with Karl Marx, who he studied extensively, for both really shined with words not with mathematics. So the author's repeated references to Schumpeter as a mathematical genius, or as a competitor in that regard with John Keynes, fails and fails obviously. Schumpeter was the least mathematical of all the great economists of the twentieth century.
Secondly, McCraw makes the error common to passionate biographers to make a sage out of their subject. Here too the book overreaches, for Schumpeter was among the worst at foretelling the future. Here again it was because he was more a historian, and less an economist. He predicted capitalism would collapse, a prediction that the author just glosses over. Yet the author pillories Karl Marx for the same error without realizing that Karl Marx wrote without the full benefit of the technological revolution, the telegraph and railroad barely underway by the 1840s. Yet by Schumpeter's time, not only were those revolutions done, but so was the telephone, electricity, the internal combustion engine and the airplane. As such, Schumpeter's pessimism was unforgivable while Karl Marx's was fully understandable.
Third, McCraw makes a shocking mistake by glossing over Schumpeter's lobbying for heavy reparations on the Germans after WW I. He did so by offering calculations that the German economy would easily recover, and therefore could support reparations. The point was fully opposed by John Keynes, who resigned as representative of Britain when the Schumpeterian perspective was used to devastate the Germans with debt burdens. If McCraw had not been at Harvard, or of such fame, it would easily have been a career ending mistake. After all, it is well known that those reparations led to Adolf Hitler and WW II, a point so well understood by 1945 that John Keynes was made the head of the entire postwar economic decisionmaking, precisely why he got to build the World Bank, IMF and Bretton Woods. Schumpeter by contrast was thoroughly discredited.
Fourth, for a business historian of unmatched credibility, McCraw makes a surprising contextual error with regard to Schumpeter's life. He seems to ignore the inevitability of progress, of the drivers of American growth in the early 20th century and absolute irrelevance of Schumpeter to that growth. Perhaps it is his bias as a biographer, or to make the layman buy the book, but it is fatal to the book. Here again, I point to the prior point that Schumpeter was more an economic historian than an economist in the sense that HAD SCHUMPETER NOT LIVED, NONE OF THE GREAT ECONOMIC ADVANCES OF THE 20TH CENTURY, INCLUDING THE VENTURE CAPITAL BUSINESS, WOULD HAVE BEEN HAMPERED. By contrast, without John Keynes, recovery after Sept. 11th, after WW II (when defense spending collapsed and social spending and reconstruction was increased to avoid a collapse of the economy) or in the midst of the Great Depression would have been hard to imagine. Precisely why comparative economic analysis undertaken by McCraw takes the tinge of conservative talk show simplicity. Harvard's economics department would likely have little of his business history about Schumpeter.
Finally, the book would have been a lot stronger had it left the idolization of Schumpeter to the jacket flaps and in the introduction. But repeated compliments only make the reader notice that the author has it wrong, especially when he summarily dismisses karl Marx or John Keynes the way a conservative talk show host would. All Schumpeter was was an immensely readable subject, and an inspiring prosaists who hungered for fame, and whose economic history was impressive, all reasons why you must buy the book and keep it prominently on your book shelf, but he was a flawed economist driven to the wrong conclusions (from reparations to the sustainability of capitalism). His grandiosity was Churchillian, as was his sense of history and society, but unlike Winston Churchill, fate never gave Schumpeter the chance to correct for a lifetime of grandiose errors.
The Basic Paradox of Capitalism.......2007-04-24
As I recently read Thomas K. McCraw's brilliant biography of Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), I was intrigued by the evolution of his career after he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Vienna (1906). At age 24, he served as a secretary of state for finance in the new Austrian republic (1919-1920), and later became chairman and president of a Vienna-based Biederman Bank (1920-1924) that collapsed. As a result of that and several substantial investments in companies which also failed, Schumpeter suffered major financial setbacks (both professional and personal) but eventually repaid his debts, then taught at the University of Bonn (1925-1932) before accepting an offer to join the Harvard faculty as a professor of economics where he continued to teach until his death in 1950. McCraw also examines Schumpeter's personal life that, understandably, reflected the successes and failures in his career. For example, Schumpeter fell deeply in love with Anna Josifina Reisinger and married her in 1925. The next year, his beloved mother died and within a month, his wife died in childbirth, as did their son. McCraw suggests that Schumpeter never fully recovered from these personal losses.
Of greatest interest to me is the context or frame-of-reference the biographical material provides for one of Schumpeter's most influential business concepts, "creative destruction," which he introduced in his most popular book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy," first published in 1942. Scholars have divided opinions as to the influences on Schumpeter's development of this concept. They probably include Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Werner Sombart.
According to Schumpeter, there is a "process of industrial mutation-if I may use that biological term-that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in." He goes on to explain, "The first thing to go is the traditional conception of the modus operandi of competition. Economists are at long last emerging from the stage in which price competition was all they saw. As soon as quality competition and sales effort are admitted into the sacred precincts of theory, the price variable is ousted from its dominant position. However, it is still competition within a rigid pattern of invariant conditions, methods of production and forms of industrial organization in particular, that practically monopolizes attention. But in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance) - competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives." (from "The Process of Creative Destruction," 1942) There are countless examples of applications of this concept, notably Jack Welch's determination to "blow up" GE after he succeeded Reginald Jones as CEO.
In his own review of Prophet of Innovation in the Wall Street Journal, Dan Seligman includes Schumpeter's widely quoted question-and-answer sequence: "Can capitalism survive? No, I do not think it can." Seligman then suggests that that answer "is hedged in later passages [in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy]. Even so, it will seem wildly counterintuitive to readers who have read Schumpeter on capitalism's huge successes." I agree. In fact, I presume to suggest that, from Schumpeter's perspective, no form of capitalism can survive and that continuous replacement of one form of capitalism by another confirms the enduring reality of creative destruction. Without it, there can be no innovation. In essence, that is the basic paradox of capitalism.
Creative Education.......2007-04-16
One of those rare books that is simultaneously entertaining and educative. Highly recommended to any one who wishes to take a crash course in economy, history, and most important what makes capitalism and free market work so well.
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- A through investigation into what went wrong at Braniff.
- Splash of Colors
- Not just upper managment
- FIND THIS BOOK!
- Outstanding
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Splash of Colors: The Self-Destruction of Braniff International
John J. Nance
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Customer Reviews:
A through investigation into what went wrong at Braniff........2003-05-29
John J. Nance is mostly known for his aviation thrillers, but this non-fiction work, his first book, is a great read. At the over 400 pages, the sad collapse of Braniff International is thoroughly looked at, from the airline's spectacular rise after 1965 to become a major world player to the shutdown on May 13, 1982. The problems which led to its downfall are all covered, the over extension after deregulation, the ineffective middle management, the poorly trained and many times hostile ground employees, the dirty tricks campaign by American Airlines and the incompetence of the later executives. Very well done. One minor complaint I have is that there are far too many footnotes. It seems to me most of them could have worked into the text, but it's not really a big deal. The bottom line is that this is a book that should be read by anyone who's in the airline industry. There's a lot to learn from Braniff's mistakes. (Note: This book is out of print, so you're in for search to get a copy, but I think you'll find it worth it.)
Splash of Colors.......2003-03-26
I am a former Braniff customer service agent. "Splash of Colors" is the most comprehensive, accurate portrayal of Braniff International. I worked for nine long months for this company. I was given no training whatsoever. I was assigned to work the weight and balance forms in operations, and flight crews continually warned management that my lack of training could cause their Boeing 727 to be misloaded and could cause an accident. Despite this, management gave me no training, instead, telling me to "try harder". Several of the managers I worked for were intoxicated most of the time.
Not just upper managment.......2001-07-05
As a former airline employee myself, I have read most of the books out there about airlines. Most of them seem to think that the only employees who matter are upper management. Not so. Nance understands that it is the pilots, flight attendants, ticket agents, and reservations agents -- the ones who have front line contact with passengers -- who ultimately matter the most in the public perception of the airline, and sometimes in its success or failure. However, this book correctly places the blame on the failure of the first Braniff where it belongs, on upper managment and take-over gurus who cheerfully ran the airline into the ground, and apparently never even paid the final paychecks of the employees left stranded and jobless back in 1982. This is the best airline book I've ever read. John Nance is a wonderful writer. I'm sorry he's turned to fiction, as his non fiction is better. His "On Shaky Ground" is the best earthquake book I've ever read.
FIND THIS BOOK!.......2000-01-11
John Nance manages to describe the intimate details of the rise and fall of this incredible airline, and he manages to leave you on the edge of your seat! An incredible book, and highly reccomended to those with an interest in avation or airlines.
Outstanding.......1999-01-31
Captain John Nance a former Braniff International Airways pilot has done an outstanding job of relating the incidents that caused one of the greatest airlines to fail. He sticks to the facts and only the facts. As a reader you can almost picture yourself there as these events unfolded. In addition to this book, Captain Nance as also wrote several others. I've read everything he has wrote and I have to say that each book is as good as the last one.
Amazon.com
Striving for excellence or building to last is one thing. Sustaining superior performance over the long haul is another matter entirely, as longtime McKinsey & Company executives Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan persuasively point out in Creative Destruction. Based on a concept first advanced some 70 years ago by economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Foster and Kaplan propose that corporations can outperform capital markets and maintain their leadership positions only if they creatively and continuously reconstruct themselves. In doing so, they can stay ahead of the upstart challengers constantly waiting in the wings. The decidedly radical paradigm that they champion has been urged in one form or another by others since Schumpeter, but this effort is particularly convincing because of the massive research the authors cite to back it up: McKinsey studies of more than 1,000 corporations in 15 industries over 36 years.
Citing the specific reasons behind ups and downs at firms such as Storage Technology, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and Corning, Foster and Kaplan claim that the process of creative destruction must become an integral part of today's corporations from top to bottom if they truly hope to attain lasting excellence (and beat Wall Street's primary indices for more than a few fleeting years). Firms that have mastered elements of this practice have done so by innovatively shedding detrimental processes and operations while cleverly spotting and appending those that add new value. The authors write that the "key to their success is the balance they have struck between creativity and destruction--between continuity and change." Their book offers impressive insight into the acts of both breaking down and building up. If its analyses of past performance mean anything, it should prove very interesting to savvy managers as well as long-term investors. --Howard Rothman
Book Description
Turning conventional wisdom on its head, a Senior Partner and an Innovation Specialist from McKinsey & Company debunk the myth that high-octane, built-to-last companies can continue to excel year after year and reveal the dynamic strategies of discontinuity and creative destruction these corporations must adopt in order to maintain excellence and remain competitive.
In striking contrast to such bibles of business literature as
In Search of Excellence and
Built to Last, Richard N. Foster and Sarah Kaplan draw on research they conducted at McKinsey & Company of more than one thousand corporations in fifteen industries over a thirty-six-year period. The industries they examined included old-economy industries such as pulp and paper and chemicals, and new-economy industries like semiconductors and software. Using this enormous fact base, Foster and Kaplan show that even the best-run and most widely admired companies included in their sample are unable to sustain their market-beating levels of performance for more than ten to fifteen years. Foster and Kaplan's long-term studies of corporate birth, survival, and death in America show that the corporate equivalent of El Dorado, the golden company that continually outperforms the market, has never existed. It is a myth.
Corporations operate with management philosophies based on the assumption of continuity; as a result, in the long term, they cannot change or create value at the pace and scale of the markets. Their control processes, the very processes that enable them to survive over the long haul, deaden them to the vital and constant need for change. Proposing a radical new business paradigm, Foster and Kaplan argue that redesigning the corporation to change at the pace and scale of the capital markets rather than merely operate well will require more than simple adjustments. They explain how companies like Johnson and Johnson , Enron, Corning, and GE are overcoming cultural "lock-in" by transforming rather than incrementally improving their companies. They are doing this by creating new businesses, selling off or closing down businesses or divisions whose growth is slowing down, as well as abandoning outdated, ingrown structures and rules and adopting new decision-making processes, control systems, and mental models. Corporations, they argue, must learn to be as dynamic and responsive as the market itself if they are to sustain superior returns and thrive over the long term.
In a book that is sure to shake the business world to its foundations,
Creative Destruction, like
Re-Engineering the Corporation before it, offers a new paradigm that will change the way we think about business.
Customer Reviews:
Not, in the end, a compelling read.......2007-01-01
The book starts of reasonably well. Its general themes explaining why large companies tend to behave in ways that make them less effective at responding to change than the market are well described. As the book tries to show examples of companies that did or did not respond well to the forces of change in business they lose their way. Not only do they extol a number of companies seemingly purely because they were founded by friends from McKinsey, they also use Enron as a successful example! Too many of their examples have not done well since the book was published and that undermines their message. The book also lacks concrete advice, though I must confess to skimming towards the end.
My takeaway? The market as a whole will ALWAYS innovate more effectively than any company so get over it and be prepared for companies to come and go and change constantly. There's not much, if anything, you can do about it.
Captialism Is Ruled by the "Gale of Creative Destruction" .......2006-03-11
This is an unbelievably well-written delineation of the state of captialistic economy. 'Creative Destruction' refers to the force behind the expanding capitalistic empire. It is a phrase coined by Joseph Schumpter in the 30's. Business leaders of today that get caught in cultural lock-in will fail tomorrow. A business needs to transform and re-evaluate itself against the currents of the constantly changing market, or fall as prey to those that do. Old-time rates of change were much slower and seemed to give credence to pure branding and operations quality over innovation. However a closer look will reveal that these companies averaged only a sixty year lifespan. Modern companies on the S&P 500 are only averaging a ten year lifespan due to the accelerating rates of change. This is an age of discontinuity. There is no longevity to the conservatism of yesterday.
This book explores the ways of creative thinking... how to foster it... and what fear mechanisms destroy it in the upper levels of corporations. It gives ideas on how to evaluate affiliations and acquisitions.
On a humorus note, Enron is cited as an example of success based on this approach. They are quoted 'we hire smart people and pay them more than they think they are worth.' and there are 'no punishments for trying (risking).' Seems like it is always best to be careful who you let guard the cookie jar.
Truly a great read by the highly respected Senior Partner and Director of McKinsey & Co.
Five Super Stars
A solid , thought-provoking book on Business Innovation.......2004-06-17
Foster's previous work - Innovation, the Attackers Advantage, is a masterpiece, and this follow up is an excellent read. An interesting observation at the start contrasts a company trying to excel and innovate, and the market as a Darwinian force, ruthlessly selecting the `best' irregardless of past performance. The message is the same, stark reminder as Clayton Christensen's - past excellence is no guarantee of future survival.
Having delivered this baleful message, the book distinguishes between typical management techniques - measurement, control, which leads to operational excellence [called convergent thinking], and the type of observation, reflection and debate [called divergent thinking] which may lead to innovation.
The book outlines methodologies which can be used to attempt to combine both convergent and divergent approaches within a firm. The book therefore takes one step further than Clayton Christensen's suggestion of setting up a separate entity to pursue a specific `blue sky' set of ideas. However it in no way underplays the seriousness of the threat of new product or new product cycles to the incumbent, successful corporations - indeed some of the examples given in the book as successes (Cisco, Corning) have since gone through major traumas in subsequent product and economic cycles.
The book seems to take explicit aim at Collin's book `Built to Last', saying that companies which have been longest in the Fortune 500 have underperformed the market - and expands this theme that the market, by having no emotional link to firms, will pick winners and punish the slow remorselessly. From an investors point of view, my interpretation of Foster's guidance would be to periodically pick the top performers in an index and sell those which don't make it to the top, regardless of past position; my interpretation of Collins is that eventually the tried and trusted firms win out.
I think my money would be on Foster.
However in terms of management thinking Foster is definitely in the Thomas Kuhn, Giovanni Dosi, Clayton Christensen, Geoffrey Moore tradition of the intense difficulty of managing to be customer focused, operationally excellent and innovative simultaneously.
How to destroy businesses and not destroy your career?.......2003-04-18
One good thing about books written by McKinsey people is that if they write something, it's gonna be smart. Because otherwise they just keep the silence.
And this book is not an exception to this rule. Whilst the readers could find the idea of a permanent review and renovation of a corporate businesses portfolio fairly old and discussed so many times in books of Drucker, Schumpeter and other authors, there're some issues which make reading of "Creative Destruction" worth the time.
First, unlike two previously mentioned famous gentlemen, Foster and Kaplan bothered themselves with sizable stock market data research and analysis. This approach should really become a standard if we ever want to see organizational behavior and corporate strategy to become scientific disciplines and not a genre of fiction literature with well-known set of rules "how to write more or less good novel".
Second, even readers very familiar with literature about corporate strategy and portfolio analysis methods could find some profound insights on these 350 pages - may be different ones for different people. For example, a clearly stated paradox between operational excellence and innovation definitely deserves thinking about, since it's just so easy to say: "Yes, we need both - tight controlled low cost operations AND creative business development" or "We need to build the great team committed to the corporation AND sometimes we need to kick a part of the team out just to ensure great stock returns", - but isn't it the same as requiring water to become dry at certain moments, convenient for the observers?
Bad thing. Do not expect to find in the book an answer to the question, stated at the very beginning. As well as where to find the businesses worth investing to. The authors do not know. Or they do not say - may be just to give to the reader an idea to invite McKinsey to think together about these issues in corporate HQs.
Doesn't deliver what it promises.......2002-07-04
This book takes some interesting insights from economist Joseph Schumpeter (who coined the term "creative destruction") and leadership expert Ron Heifetz and then goes on to make overly broad generalizations from them, supported by an extensive but questionable data analysis. The authors go on at length about the size and scope of the McKinsey corporate database that provides much of the backbone for the book's conclusions, but anyone who studies excellence or best-practices knows that you dont learn much about them by studying large, general samples; in fact, such samples are designed to rule out the exceptions. (And I'll just overlook the fact that Enron is one of the exceptional performers they highlight.)
At bottom, the book fails to deliver on either of the promises in its subtitle. The primary reason seems to be that little of it is drawn from practical experience with exceptional companies. Despite its scope, the McKinsey database doesn't really answer, from a management point of view, why most companies have underperformed. (Although less systematically presented, you can get more wisdom from a practitioner's book like Tom Kelly's "The Art of Innovation.") This is most obvious as the book moves into suggestions for "how to change" these companies: neither the suggested methodology for strategic planning nor the successful case examples provide anything more than some basic, general ideas that have been better covered elsewhere in the organizational development and management literature.
The subtitle also suggests that the book presents a refutation of the arguments for corporate sustainability that Collins and Porras gave in "Built to Last". Interestingly, Foster and Kaplan disdain to address that book directly or even cite it, except in a buried footnote. This is unfortunate because they present data on some of Collins' and Porras' profiled companies that suggest they have performed far more poorly than "Built to Last" would lead you to believe; it would have been helpful to understand who was overstating what. Collins and Porras also stress in detail that built-to-last companies "preserve the core / stimulate progress"; it is not clear that "creative destruction" differs from this in any significant way. In sum, the issue of how to create long-term value will still be a big question when you've finished reading this book.
It is interesting to note, as the authors are current and former McKinsey consultants, that a majority of the underperformers in their database are McKinsey clients. If these companies failed to turn around after investing in McKinsey advice, what is the likelihood that anyone else will do it from ideas they got reading a book?
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Managing New Technology Development
William E. Souder , and
J. Daniel Sherman
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New technology development starts with the generation of an idea. It ends with that idea's commercial applications: a new product or a new service in between is a complex sequence of stages demanding specialized management methods. With this in-depth survey, R&D, marketing, and engineering managers can learn from the foremost experts about the most successful, proven practices and techniques--for managing all the stages of new technology development. Each chapter focuses on the activities of a separate stage, using real-world industrial examples to illustrate applications of the product champion, parallel development methods, human factors in compressing cycle times, and other concepts.
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Broken Threads: The Destruction of the Jewish Fashion Industry in Germany and Austria
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By now, it would seem that every facet of the Nazi attack on Jewish culture had been told. But the destruction of the Jewish fashion industry in Germany and Austria adds an astounding new chapter to the story. Here, Roberta S. Kramer traces the wanton destruction of a thriving fashion industry whose impact on German high fashion was regarded by the Reich as being too heavily influenced by Jewish designers, manufacturers, and merchandisers. The emergence of ready-to-wear and the development of the modern department store with its innovative merchandising and lavish interior design attracted the attention of the Nazis, who proceeded with a campaign of boycotts, humiliation, and Aryanization. Broken Threads includes photographs and fashion plates that tragically illustrate the social and cultural losses suffered during this period.
Book Description
A Frenchman rents a Hollywood movie. A Thai schoolgirl mimics Madonna. Saddam Hussein chooses Frank Sinatra's "My Way" as the theme song for his fifty-fourth birthday. It is a commonplace that globalization is subverting local culture. But is it helping as much as it hurts? In this strikingly original treatment of a fiercely debated issue, Tyler Cowen makes a bold new case for a more sympathetic understanding of cross-cultural trade. Creative Destruction brings not stale suppositions but an economist's eye to bear on an age-old question: Are market exchange and aesthetic quality friends or foes? On the whole, argues Cowen in clear and vigorous prose, they are friends. Cultural "destruction" breeds not artistic demise but diversity.
Through an array of colorful examples from the areas where globalization's critics have been most vocal, Cowen asks what happens when cultures collide through trade, whether technology destroys native arts, why (and whether) Hollywood movies rule the world, whether "globalized" culture is dumbing down societies everywhere, and if national cultures matter at all. Scrutinizing such manifestations of "indigenous" culture as the steel band ensembles of Trinidad, Indian handweaving, and music from Zaire, Cowen finds that they are more vibrant than ever--thanks largely to cross-cultural trade.
For all the pressures that market forces exert on individual cultures, diversity typically increases within society, even when cultures become more like each other. Trade enhances the range of individual choice, yielding forms of expression within cultures that flower as never before. While some see cultural decline as a half-empty glass, Cowen sees it as a glass half-full with the stirrings of cultural brilliance. Not all readers will agree, but all will want a say in the debate this exceptional book will stir.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting Book.......2007-02-07
This book is about how globalization is *changing* world cultures, for better or for worse. One of Cowen's central arguments is that globalization creates less diversity between cultures but more between individuals. So should we be pro individualism or pro collectivism?
His last three chapters on Hollywood, Dumbing Down, and National Culture are the most memorable, and persuasive. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Hollywood. His explanation of how modern cinema is what it is was enlightening.
Overall Cowen does what he set out to do; explained how globalization has changed world cultures. More often than not Cowen thinks this has had a net positive effect, but he does argue the other side of the coin. In my opinion Cowen contributes to the globalization vs. anti-globalization debate arguing that it's really one of collectivist culture vs. individual culture.
Change is Constant.......2006-07-22
Tyler Cowen very adeptly reminds the reader that the world's regional cultures have never been static. What we think of as "native" art is really a product of global influence on a local population. So of course it seems silly to decry globalization as homogenizing cultures, when we understand that cultures have always interacted with each other. Indeed, what we are seeing with globalization is the increasing heterogenizing of cultures. Sure you see McDonalds almost everywhere, but you also see indigenous art from Central America, music from the Congo, movies from France, and food from India.
Tyler Cowen does not dismiss the degredation of certain cultural aspects, but he matter-of-factly points out that the alternative, protectionism, is more destructive in the long run, since creativity is stifled.
Camouflage for Corporatism.......2006-05-08
What happens when an economist steps outside of his field to don the hat of an armchair cultural anthropologist? Tyler Cowen's "Creative Destruction" is the result - a book that ignores global corporatism and the roles that states and their creations - i.e. corporations have played in corrupting free enterprise and free markets not only by attacking, usurping, and infiltrating the cultural programming centers of target nations: sport; entertainment including music, cinema, and televison; books and magazines; fashion including cosmetics, clothes and accessories; school and university textbooks, but by attacking, usurping, and infiltrating the cultural programming avenues of America itself.
"Ethos makes globalization a nontrivial problem for culture"(p50) writes Cowen, "By ethos I mean the special feel or flavor of a culture" (p48). Cowen maintains that "There is little danger that economic growth, international trade, and the spread of technical knowledge will bring inferior quality hammers, refrigerators, or vacuum cleaners either to the United States or to lesser developed nations" (p50). It would appear that the last time Cowen walked into a Wal-mart, K-mart, or other department store was to purchase a new pair of shoes for his high school graduation - nearly every item for sale in department stores today is produced by slaves in Communist China. Prior to Clinton's late 1990s trip to Communist China, `Made in China' meant Free China - the Republic of China on the Island of Taiwan. How it became legal for Communist slave-produced goods to be sold in the United States is a question that boggles the American mind! When did America ever allow Soviet goods to be sold in America? Never, to my knowledge. But today slave-produced goods from Communist China are everywhere.
Not only that, the quality of these slave-produced goods is greatly inferior to the quality of goods produced by free workers (workers who may safely say to their employer - "Take this job and shove it, I ain't workin' here no more!"). For example, the Delphi spindle bearing plant in Communist China that is supposed to be a reflection of the Delphi spindle bearing plant in Ohio cannot make bearings that will last through the 50,000-mile new vehicle warranty, whereas the U.S. Delphi bearings last 400,000 miles. Pontiac Aztecs and Buick Rendezvous have Communist Chinese bearings on the front wheels and U.S. bearings on the rear wheels. When Delphi was spun-off from General Motors in 1999, the plan was for the Chinese plant to replace the U.S. plant by 2006 because the Chinese government charges Delphi far less a month for a slave worker than an employee demands in the United States through union negotiation. Now Delphi is stuck with a U.S. plant it doesn't want because General Motors needs the bearings but the Chinese duplicate cannot produce the quality to meet even minimum standards. Delphi, and Cowen, should know that slaves have no incentive to do a good job. Only freedom creates incentives.
Cowen's six chapters in his 179-paged book are 1. Trade Between Cultures 2. Global Culture Ascendant: The Roles of Wealth and Technology 3. Ethos and the Tragedy of Cultural Loss 4. Why Hollywood Rules the World, and Whether We Should Care 5. Dumbing Down and the Least Common Denominator , and 6. Should National Culture Matter? These chapters are followed by a section labeled References followed by an Index.
Cowen sidesteps the issue of the role states play in cultural planning and their relationship to corporations, which are nothing less than creations of the state themselves. Cowen's book is short on cultural theory, cultural policy and planning, the political framework, national identities, and statist cultural planning to include arts administration and practice, tourism, media, the sports industry, or even urban and regional planning. He never mentions the statist UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and the ways that governments use cultural resources to integrate development of towns, regions, and countries. And he is silent on the role of the soldier in globalization. Cowen's book is simply the mixing of apples and oranges, of the theoretical free market and today's global corporatism, with the effect of providing camouflage for what is really happening - i.e. economic fascism on a global scale, as uninformed anthropologically as it is mistaken. This is all a shame because Cowen's prose is quite artful and could have been a delight to read.
A book that does a much better job introducing readers to the processes of globalization is Tony Spybey's "Globalization and World Society" (1996), which should sit on one's bookshelf next to a copy of Paul H. Weaver's "The Suicidal Corporation" (1988).
Better than Hoan Chau's review.......2005-02-04
If you're at all interested in this book, ignore Hoan Chau's review. How does Cowen know Mexicans enjoy the choices available at Wal-Mart? Simple, they shop there and keep it in business. You don't have to like Wal-Mart (I sure don't) to recognize that it doesn't coerce anyone into its store. In an impoverished country like Mexico, it brings in more goods at lower prices than were previously available, thus improving people's standard of living.
On creativity: Cowen isn't writing a philosophical treatise on creativity, so if he ignores the "external influences" on it, that's not a just criticism. But it's surprising that someone could read this book and miss the point: Cowen is arguing that the creativity of others is an external influence on an individual's creativity, so the value of global exchange is that our creativity is stimulated by contact with other country's cultural goods.
Consider the U.S. without Chinese or Mexican food (or, in my case, the nightmare of not having Thai food). Consider the U.S. without the influence of African music. No spirituals, no jazz or blues, no "Graceland" by Paul Simon. Consider how popular Jackie Chan is, not to mention the more respectable Chinese films such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." If you're more highbrow, consider the absence of Mozart or Paganini. Imagine no access to Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" or the Tao Te Ching, or the Boddhisatva.
In short, Cowen's point is that the global exchange of cultural goods enriches our lives. Efforts to restrict globalization will restrict the flow of these goods, impoverishing us all in ways that are hard to measure in dollar terms, but are easily understood in terms of cultural vivacity and creativity.
And, importantly, contrary to popular wisdom, America isn't exerting cultural hegemony--the Disneyfication of the world is overstated (easy to do when we have such jarring sights as a McDonalds jammed next to Beijing's Forbidden City. But other countries, including developing countries, export their cultural goods to the U.S. This increases the value of their cultural traditions, making it beneficial for people to hang onto them.
Remember, it's individual people (you and me) making these choices. We don't choose them unless we believe we're benefitting. And while we will make mistakes, it's a bit hard to believe that almost all our decisions almost all the time are actually harmful to us. It's even harder to believe that a small group of elites--whether in government or the self-appointed protectors of culture--will be able to make better choices for us. In short, this book is also an argument for preserving individual liberty.
An Analysis of Tyler Cowen's Creative Destruction.......2004-05-04
Book Review For: Dr. Nicholas Capaldi
Loyola University New Orleans, Louisiana
BA705 Business Ethics-Spring 2004
In Tyler Cowen's Creative Destruction, he addresses the viability of diverse culture in a rapidly expanding global market economy. Most specifically, he focuses on "the particular aspects of culture consisting products which stimulate and entertain us." Cowan defines the following: "music, literature, cinema, cuisine, and visual arts, as the relevant manifestations of culture." The book attempts to answer, by his own account, the age-old question "dating back at least far as Greek civilization: Are market exchange and aesthetic quality allies or enemies?" He proposes that market economies and cross cultural trade have catapulted societies throughout history by facilitating the spread of scientific ideas, creative arts, and enabling isolated cultures to experience a "richer menu of choice" The author offers extensive detail concerning alternative arguments throughout the book as well as the fact that, as in all things, there are opportunity costs associated with each view and some resulting in tragic outcomes.
Cowen qualifies himself on this subject by defining his approach according to his "background as an economist" and his relevant studies of the "scholarly literature and diverse experiences as a cultural consumer", rather than an analysis based on a "single path of specialized study." He outlines his argument that the global economy fosters positive influences on the world's culture by subsequently analyzing the following three "primary lessons":
1. The concept of cultural diversity has multiple and divergent meanings.
2. Cultural homogenization and heterogenization are not alternatives or substitutes; rather, they come together.
3. Cross cultural exchange, while it will alter and disrupt each society it touches, will support innovation and creative human energies.
Cowan begins with the concept definition of cultural diversity as it can be understood in multiple contexts. He explains that diversity is not a single concept. First, "diversity within a society refers to the richness of the menu of choice in that society." The most fragile cultures, with respect to technology, also tend to respond in an explosive fashion to the introduction of new ideas and technologies. They have proven to adapt these technologies and innovations in ways their trading partners never anticipated.
Secondly, Cowan states, "Many critics of globalization focus on diversity across societies comparing whether each society offers the same "menu of choice" and whether societies are becoming more similar," through the process of globalization. He notes that generally, "diversity across societies is a collectivist concept because it does not consider the choices faced by an individual." A libertarian would allow "individuals to create their own meaning." For the purpose of Cowan's argument, libertarians foster individual creativity which is agreed by most to be the backbone of culturally diverse arts.
Limitations placed by government, or activists for that matter, on the market of exchange can significantly alter the outcomes, possibly even the survival of, poorer cultures. Cowan believes that poorer cultures especially, should be allowed to participate in cross cultural trade, even at a social cost, in order to experience the "gains from trade" with outside cultures. As Adam Smith argues in his, Wealth of Nations.., "the best vehicle for innovation is a free market system." Cowan's argument borrows from Smith's ideas and appropriately applies this concept to his claim that cultural diversity requires innovation for the survival of those poorer cultures which would otherwise cease to exist in the long run. As the adaptation process of the new technologies an innovations occur within a poorer culture; it becomes interwoven with aspects borrowed from foreign cultures. Cowan defines this concept later as "synthetic culture."
Synthetic culture refers to the fact that pure societies are mostly obsolete. For example, "The original ideas and inspirations of tribal groups of Zaire have been commodified, and shaped into new synthetic forms, for the purpose of courting outside markets Cowan retorts that the same "defenders of diversity decry the passing of previous cultures and implicitly oppose diversity-over-time," without regard to the necessity of innovations for survival. Cowan's argument has remarkable semblance to that of Cass Sunstein's "Paradoxes of the Regulatory State" where Sunstein argues that "redistributive regulation harms those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder." Here, Sunstein points out that often times regulations have "perverse effects" which serve opposite to the activist intended agendas. Likewise, Cowan argues that those who defend cultural diversity for the sake of "creative purity" will, if successful, risk eliminating the cultures they claim to be defending.
Cowan's final "primary lesson" states that "Cross-cultural exchange brings about value clashes that cannot be solved scientifically, in the short term. In the long run however, any "disruptions and alterations will inevitably support innovation and creative human energies." The whole world has a broader menu of choice (from participating in cross-cultural exchange) but older synthetic cultures must give way to newer synthetic cultures." Cowan states, "As we might expect from cross cultural contact, it supports greater diversity of identity, or ethos, within each society while limiting diversity across societies. As identities move closer together, they cease to make artistic production distinct in varying locales." Cowan claims however, that these ethoses are replaced inevitably by a greater number of partial "niches."
Cowan concludes that "Modernity allows us to enjoy the diversity of the world to a very high degree, relative to the previous ages, even when it undercuts that diversity in some regards. The mere fact exists that change will produce serious disappointment for individuals who seek to preserve particular markers of cultural identity." Cowan states "that it is not obvious (nor reasonable) why markers from the past should have more normative force than other possible markers." So, "Are market exchange and aesthetic quality allies or enemies?" Cowan believes that not only are market exchange and aesthetic quality allies, but they are also interdependent and make the whole world better off. Cross cultural exchange broadens cultural diversity across cultures and its influences within some cultures may even save them from extinction.
Book Description
Every working day in the United States, 90,000 jobs disappear--and an equal number are created. This discovery has radically altered the way economists think about how labor markets work. Without this necessary phenomenon of "creative destruction," our economies would experience much lower growth. Unemployment is a natural consequence of a vigorous economy--and is in fact indispensable to it. In The Natural Survival of Work, labor economists Pierre Cahuc and André Zylberberg consider how to manage the unemployment that results from the desirable churning of the economy, drawing on recent economic research and citing examples from France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.
Unemployment in many continental European countries, particularly among youth, has reached high levels in recent years, and Cahuc and Zylberberg criticize labor market policies that are based on politics rather than economics. They discuss the minimum wage in both the United States and France and show that increasing it, under certain circumstances, can increase employment. They find fault with the idea that work sharing is a cure for unemployment. They consider how to design a system of unemployment insurance that does not destroy the incentive to find work, and examine the effect of government regulation of layoffs. Finally, they analyze the true impact of education and training as remedies for unemployment. Economists today know more about how labor markets work. Policies could be more effective, Cahuc and Zylberberg argue, if they were based upon this knowledge.
The French edition of The Natural Survival of Work won the 2004 European Economics Book Award.
Customer Reviews:
Just Read it.......2006-12-24
This book is fascinating. You learn a lot on the labor market and it is really easy to read.
Customer Reviews:
Greed Is Not Good for Anyone.......2006-03-02
In the movie Wall Street, you may remember the statement, "Greed is good." Well, The Rise of the Rogue Executive makes exactly the opposite point. I like the book better than the movie on this point.
Public companies are primarily run as a confidence game these days in which all the players know the game is rigged . . . but don't really care as long as they get their piece. If you go back and look at any period of long economic bounty in American history, the period ends with those who were once hailed as heroes being seen as crooks. The current time is no different as those who were the biggest game riggers are carted off to be prosecuted . . . if not jailed.
Adelphia, Enron, Worldcom and others were sleazy operations that many wanted to believe were okay. But they weren't. The emperor actually had no clothes.
In this powerful account of the events leading up to revealing the frauds at the center of these greedy games, you will find out the roles that institutional investors, accounting systems, auditors, directors, journalists, investment bankers and ordinary employees played in facilitating scam after scam. Drawing a powerful parallel to the tragedy of the commons, in which all take advantage of a common resource . . . but don't renew the resource, the authors argue that no one is looking out for society's best interests any more. Instead, people are looking out for what they can tear off the carcass and run.
For those who work on the inside with the parties described here, there's not much new. For the average outsider, this book will be a revelation. However, most of that revelation has been made elsewhere before. So the book will seem a little dated to many.
The best part of the book came in the detailed descriptions of how accountants (especially at Arthur Andersen) lost their souls while in search of moolah.
The book has two primary weaknesses. First, the authors do love to tell the same stories over and over again. Believe me, there are plenty of bad actors out there they could have written about . . . but didn't. Second, the authors fail to perceive that some of those they praise were little better than those they vilify. For instance, Roberto Goizueta (who is held up as a paragon of virtue because he didn't buy a new home) was a Wall Street manipulator par excellence. He bought and sold bottling operations to keep pumping up e.p.s. on a regular basis. Had he simply wanted to build a stronger company, the bottling rehabs would have been done much faster. A Wall Street Journal story showed that in his later years, Goizueta spent much of his time writing individual letters to security analysts and reporters trying to spin the Coca-Cola story more favorably. Not surprisingly, Coca-Cola didn't do so well after Goizueta died.
I'm also more a little skeptical that the actions taken so far by the government and companies and the prescriptions advanced by the authors will really make a difference. I suspect that it will take a few more rounds of even worse scandals and a deep recession to really clean out the messes. Until then, just assume that earnings are manufactured more in the accounting computers than in the factories and stores of the company.
Good Material from a Credible Source.......2005-12-24
Sayles states that today's threats to American capitalism come primarily from within the corporation, not like prior external efforts to monopolize markets. The threat started with modest deviations from accepted accounting practice - expensing stock options, and went from there. Soon executive compensation became obscene rising from 50 - 100 times that of average workers up to 1,000 times. Worse yet, the compensation was typically based on mythical earnings.
Earnings were frequently manipulated through smoothing (use of "cookie jar reserves), capitalizing costs that should have been expenses, generous assumptions about pension fund earnings, earnings insurance, off-the-books liabilities, losses, and subsidiaries, abusive/fradulent tax shelters (from '95 to '00, more than 60% of American corporations paid no federal income tax - per GAO research), rigged trading to boost values, fraudulent sales, etc. (Would have liked more examples of abuses, though perhaps those cited covered 90%+ of the abuses.)
The impact of these manipulations is more broadly felt today (with about 50% of citizens owning stock), than 1929 (about 10%), and the fact that many rely on stocks for a considerable part of their retirement funds.
Business leaders have had plenty of assistance in their distortions. Useless and complicit auditors (Arthur Andersen, KPMG), complacent boards that do not want to rock the boat and jeopardize their status and easy money, investment bankers willing to muzzle stock analysts to improve participation in future stock offerings, CEOs that also serve as Board Chairmen - controlling agendas, limiting access, "picking" board members, creating overly large boards (making meaningful participation difficult), and restricting stockholders' ability to replace board members. Sayles also identifies media and academics (both entities identified Enron as evidence of outstanding management) as also less than alert.
Sayles identifies pursuit of short-term earnings, combined with executive greed, as the major culprits. Large executive stock-options serve as the primary link between the two. On the other hand, Sayles also points out that stock options were introduced to cure a prior problem - motivating leaders of corporations that had stagnated over a period of years.
Sayles also points out that dishonesty is not limited to today's business world - witness the Iraq prisoner abuse, professional sports use of steroids, the Catholic Church's sex scandal, media scandals (inflated circulation numbers, made-up stories), educators helping pupils cheat on proficiency tests and fudging dropout rates).
What's the answer, the cure? Sayles offers a few suggestions - eg. smaller boards, limiting the number of boards that anyone serves on, requiring certification of earnings, limiting the exercise of stock options to much further in the future (Sayles even points out that Sec. of the Treasury John Snow was able to return his stock optioned-stock after the price fell), etc. Hopefully they are enough
How did we get here?.......2005-11-06
Having been part of the Enron experience, I was very interested to read this book: The Rise Of The Rogue Executive - How Good Companies Go Bad And How To Stop The Destruction by Leonard R. Sayles and Cynthia J. Smith. It's amazing how we allowed ourselves to get to this point...
Contents: The Tipping Point - How Good Companies Go Bad And Executives Become Rogues; American Business At Risk - Picking Up The Pieces And Looking Ahead; The Stock Market And Executive Decision Making; Black Boxes And Big Black Lies; The Shocking Destruction Of Arthur Andersen, Auditing's Gold Standard; Auditing The Public's Auditors; Directors - Why The Weak Oversight; Too Silent Critics - Journalism; Too Silent Critics - Academe; Fees Galore; How We Nearly Lost American Capitalism; The Mythic CEO - Why Real Leaders Became An Endangered Species; Seeking And Valuing Real Leadership; We Can Do Better; Endnotes; From The Authors; Addendum - Supreme Court Overturns Arthur Andersen Conviction; Index
So many things were considered normal and were not questioned. Sayles and Smith take a look at some of the elements that led to the rise and fall of companies like Enron and Worldcom. Obviously Enron serves as a model whipping boy for most (if not nearly all) of the examples, as there was so much going on there. Rise lays out the abuses in a clear and concise manner, with a myriad of example cases to back them up. I especially appreciated the chapters on directors and journalism. I didn't realize that directors were often no more than a glamorous collection of big names put on the board to make the company look good. It's incredible that people charged with overseeing a company's direction can have so little knowledge and involvement in far too many cases. And we all know how few dissenting voices existed in the mass media pointing out the flaws of these companies. Ones that did try and raise objections were too often shut out by others and were quickly drowned out. If only we as the public had listened and paid attention...
While the book is supposed to offer remedies on how to stop this abuse, it seemed like there was less of that and more emphasis on pointing out the abuses. To be sure, the first step in stopping an abuse is finding out about it in the first place. But for whatever reason, I didn't feel a strong "call to action" in terms of a series of proposed changes. I can't quite put my finger on it, to be truthful. Maybe I was just too close to one of the meltdowns, or maybe the carnage of the abuse overpowered the rest of the material.
Regardless of that, it's still an important book to read. I'd like to think that what's happened in the last two or three years has allowed us to turn the corner on these types of situations. Realistically however, you know it's still happening. Rise will open your eyes and make you think twice about what's going on in the executive suite...
the rise of the rogue executive.......2005-10-24
The authors give both the ideal of what top executives should be doing and how auditors should be auditing,according to the rules of the market system, then show the changes that took place in these roles in the 1990's and why these changes developed, and the serious consequences the changes have for American businesses.
A BRILLIANT BROADSIDE AT THE ROLE OF MYTHIC LEADERS & THEIR SUPPORT SYSTEM........2005-09-06
This book is a forthright assessment of the manner in which top executives with personal ambitions that far overshadow the long-term interests of the businesses they lead or have led, have undermined and, in some cases, destroyed companies. It examines the 'how and whys' boards have attracted and supported these rogue executives, and the complicity of academia, the media, and consultants.
The authors also focus on the critical role of compensation and the inability of the free market system to correct the wrongs committed by such mythic leaders, who have been idealized as rainmakers. In contrast, real leaders serve the interests of long-term shareholders. In a nutshell, the book examines how the entire American business system has gone wrong in boardrooms and executive suites, allowing individual self interest to create a short-term business culture that threatens the long-term success of the American economy.
The authors close by recognizing that new laws are not the answer; deterrence has to come from the larger business system and a culture change on the part of the public.
The book is a scathing and brilliant broadside at the way the rogue executive class has been allowed to emerge and undermine the strength of the American enterprise system. It is hard-hitting and engrossing-must-reading for everyone with a stake in the future of our economy.
Average customer rating:
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Re-Discovering Schumpeter: Creative Destruction Evolving into 'Mode 3'
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1403942412
Release Date: 2007-04-03 |
Book Description
This book focuses on "creative destruction" in the context of the knowledge economy and society. It examines the ideas of innovation and entrepreneurship developed by Joseph Schumpeter in the early part of the twentieth century; ideas that challenged the orthodoxy of his peers and continue to be a critical force for developing sustainable advantage among enterprises. The discussions and examples illustrate ideas and provide arguments - for both the academic and practitioner - maintaining that although Schumpeter's concepts were developed over seventy years ago, his theory of "creative destruction" is essential for organizations to survive in the future.
Book Description
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction was established in 2004 and charged with examining capabilities and challenges of American intelligence community concerning the capabilities, intentions, and activities of foreign powers relating to the design, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, proliferation, transfer, testing, potential or threatened use, or use of weapons of mass destruction, related means of delivery, and other related threats of the 21st Century. This official report to the president presents 74 recommendations for improving the United States Intelligence community.
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