capitalism

In their new book What's Mine is Yours, Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers brilliantly capture the current socio-economic zeitgeist. While the last 50 years were all about the hyper-consumerism fueled by advertising and credit, the current period is all about the creation of a new model of collaborative consumption that is based on a belief in the commons, trust between strangers and new ways to exploit excess capacity.

Last week, on Thursday night September 16, 2010, I had the good fortune of speaking to the Society for Information Management’s (SIM’s) Boston chapter about the implications of social media. You can get the slides here.

We need more (and more innovative) social enterprises and I really want to see a top tier MBA programs with specialization in Social Enterprises. Call it B-school needs S-school. There are so many problems out there and sometimes we feel we are almost giving up. Our capitalist system is not adjusting well to these shocks. It is almost pointless for these endless debates on how things got to this point and who is to blame. The point remains: We've got to change it—and change it fast – and change it for the better.

by: Idris Mootee

Can we see the future of capitalism? Does it have one? We have pushed capitalism to the extreme and exposed the worst side of it. Yes, capitalism has two sides. The good side is the part that appeals to our self-interest. It gives entrepreneurs a free hand to pursue their ideas in the marketplace, and create wealth, jobs and economic progress in the process. The bad side of capitalism is that it's not good for sustainability.

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

(note: this is part 3 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives) 

Earlier this year, I wrote that Karl Marx was prescient when it came to explaining the woes of corporations that find themselves chasing the same consumers.