The Surprising Solution

by Piasecki, Bruce

• ISBN13: 9781402214509
• ISBN10: 1402214502
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-11-03
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Inc

Summary

The world today is more swift, more severe... and has never been more full of opportunity.

Table of Contents

Foreword: An Introduction to the 21st Century	p. ix
An Introduction to the Paperback Edition by the Author	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xix
The New Wave of Understanding
Competition and Social Needs	p. 3
The Panic and Resolve of Leaders	p. 19
Social Response Capitalism	p. 41
Redefining Corporate Leadership: The Surprising Solution in Action
Accepting the Future: Toyota and the Search for the Superior Car	p. 69
Inside the Corporate Mansion	p. 97
Developing Leaders We Can Trust	p. 111
Understanding Value in the 21st Century
HP and the Vast Universe of Consumer Delight	p. 145
Money Will Not Manage Itself	p. 183
Money Matters: The Force and Grace of Social Products	p. 209
Afterword: The Global Financial Meltdown Today and Tomorrow	p. 233
Afterword	p. 245
Afterword by Standard and Poor's George Dallas: The Power of Money and the Power of the Consumer: Social Response from an Investment Perspective	p. 251
Leveraging Social Change	p. 257
Endnotes and Bibliography	p. 263
Index	p. 305
About the Author and His Firm	p. 315
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

<p><strong>Excerpt from Chapter 1: Competition and Social Needs</strong></p><p>There is something incredibly rapid and shocking about global consolidation. When one company merges with another, they grow exponentially overnight. We see it happen all the time, but we do not know exactly what it means.</p><p>I once shared a five-minute elevator ride with a senator in Washington before a key session of Congress. As we discussed this global phenomenon, he said: "Certainly, the seven sisters—the world's largest oil players—must be doing something right to get that big. It could not just be their love of debt, their faith in complex technologies, and their thirst to span the globe. They must be doing something right, don't you think?"</p><p>I have been pondering this question for ten years now. There are only five oil giants left standing, so not all do it exactly right. Yet, overall, is this rapid expanse of companies a result of doing things right? And by "right," what exactly is meant: right for the environment, right for people of all means, right for the profitability of the owners at any cost to others? Is the growth of these companies good or bad for our world and those of us who live in it?</p><p><strong>Consider these facts:</strong></p><ol><li>Fifty-one of the one hundred largest economies in the world are now corporations, not nations.</li><li>They are massive mansions unto themselves who have great political leverage.</li><li>The one hundred largest multinational corporations (MNCs) now control about 20 percent of global foreign assets. These top one hundred are household names.</li><li>Three hundred MNCs—conglomerates such as Honeywell, IBM, DuPont, Dow, and Whirlpool—now account for 25 percent of the world's total assets, a sizeable impact.</li><li>As much as 40 percent of world trade now occurs within these top multinationals, which explains why they are studied and emulated by smaller companies.</li><li>Only twenty-one nations have gross domestic product markets larger than the annual sales revenue of each of the six largest multinational corporations.</li></ol><p>This astonishing increase in the size and global scope of a few key companies defines our world. Three hundred billion dollar entities with businesses in at least 150 countries each are no longer rare. GE is in this realm, as are Wal-Mart and Microsoft, among others. I now believe this new global world can help improve your car, your computer, your food and its safety, medical devices, the length, comfort, and satisfaction of your life, and even the appliances and construction of your home. By doing so, it can also address the social problems we struggle with, in conjunction with the government, in a way that's good for both society and business. And in fact, it must do this. What is at stake is our very sense of the future.</p><p>Why do I now believe this? We will take the time to explore the answers to that throughout the book. Yet, the important thing to understand up front is that corporate globalization is not something new or something in the future that we can plan for or decide upon. It is here. There is hardly a nation on earth not impacted and reshaped by these large multinationals. There are few citizens whose days are not directly shaped by the choices of these firms, from the food we choose to make for dinner to the tools we use to get our jobs done and keep our families safe. Even airports and hospitals are influenced by the behavior of large oil and automobile companies, as are our news outlets and daily commutes.</p><p>Four-fifths of the world's population now live in cities, rather than farms or rural areas, for the first time in human history. Oil, energy, the mobility of citizens, and the price of goods are the central variables that made this rapid urbanization possible, from the things you buy in Milan and Rome to those you can expect to enjoy in megacities like London and Singapore. This has been made possible by the corporate strategies explored throughout the book.</p><p>So if this is the world we live in, we must be aware of and understand it if we are to succeed and thrive in the future. Yet most of us, as demonstrated by Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat (2006, second edition), take this rapid globalization for granted and celebrate it with something close to abandon. Isn't it wonderful, we say, that we can get all this entertainment from Sony, all these imported goods for so little at Wal-Mart, and all this information "for free" deposited so swiftly into our iPod, our HP portable, or our PDA handheld? But we have yet to stop and take assessment of the situation, and understand how to harness the power of this rapid set of changes.</p><p>I intend this book to start a conversation about the powers and responsibilities of the multinational corporations. This conversation will get more intense, louder, more nuanced, and more focused on specific companies' behaviors over the next fifteen to thirty years. The basis of the conversation is this: I now believe the best path to that common goal of a better world resides in the rising role of large firms to develop better products.</p><p>Archimedes peaked his effort to win support in defending his land against all common invaders with his famous sound bite, "Give me a lever large enough, and I will move the world." This great preindustrial thinker understood the power of finding the pivot point in a fulcrum. Today, people's need to help create a better world is becoming the pivot point for all of our investments, hopes, and aspirations.</p>