The Limits of Business Development and Economic Growth Why Business Will Need to Invest Less in the Future

by Larsson, Mats

• ISBN13: 9781403942395
• ISBN10: 1403942390
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

There are limits to business development and economic growth. With the help of modern production and information technologies, companies are coming ever closer to the limits of what can be achieved but ultimately nothing can be done in less than no time and at less than no cost. We now need to find areas of competitive advantage that have not yet been fully exploited. This book presents both the problems and the solutions in an accessible way for experts and non-experts alike.

Author Biography

Mats Larsson is a management consultant, with fifteen years experience in strategy development, IT-management and process development. He has previously co-written two books about e-business with David Lundberg. In both of these they have pursued the idea of electronic markets as 'transparent' markets, which has lead them to draw conclusions that are different from most other authors on e-business. The first of these books was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 1998 under the title of The Transparent Market.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(3)
1 A Grim View of Development: The End of Growth as We Know it?	4	(23)
Part I The Historic Development of Competitive Advantage
2 Product Proliferation, Quality and Price	27	(11)
3 Time as a Competitive Advantage	38	(11)
4 Agility as a Source of Competitive Advantage	49	(8)
Part II Strategic and Operational Limits of Competitive Advantages
5 Strategy and Operational Efficiency	57	(9)
6 Production Processes	66	(6)
7 Transportation Processes and Vehicle Maintenance	72	(3)
8 Product Speed and Capacity	75	(4)
9 Research and Development Processes	79	(2)
10 E-Business and the Promise of Creativity and Economic Growth	81	(26)
11 The Limits of Development	107	(18)
Part III The Race Towards Zero
12 The General Drive to Compress Time and Reduce Cost	125	(18)
13 Print-on-Demand	143	(13)
14 The Gradual Growth of Broadband Communication and Print-on-Demand	156	(13)
Part IV New Sources of Competitive Advantage
15 Secondary Qualities	169	(10)
16 Customers Can Help to Create New Economic Growth by Demanding New Features and Secondary Qualities	179	(5)
17 Governments and Political Parties Can Support the Development of Secondary Qualities	184	(7)
Part V Structural Change Could Create Further Growth
18 Existing Structures in the Economy Determine the Limits of Growth	191	(9)
19 Innovation within the Monetary System Can Create New Work and Sustainable Abundance	200	(11)
Conclusion	211	(4)
References	215	(2)
Index	217