Aside from minor regulations that prohibit conspicuous damage to consumers and competitors, capitalism maximizes the freedom of individual businesses and fosters the fullest possible expression of entrepreneurial behavior. This freedom has been a friend to the inspiration and creativity that has driven increasing global prosperity, important advances in technology, and the numerous product and service innovations that provide daily convenience.
Yet because it maximizes the freedom of individual businesses, capitalism can be less directly responsive to the interests of less powerful competitors, of the less advantaged quarters of society, and of the environmental system that sustains us all. Freedom allows the leading edge to rapidly advance but with only trickle-down benefits to the trailing edge.
Discussions regarding this dichotomy can easily get stuck in an either or debate, promoting individual freedom to the exclusion of the common good or vice versa. But it is time that we move past "either, or" thinking and seek a new economic paradigm that emphasizes a win, win outcome. After experiencing the pros and cons of capitalism we stand poised to enact a more integrated approach that maximizes individual business freedom even while benefiting the aspects of life that currently occupy the trailing edge.
Due to a lack of inter-firm coordination and collaboration our present form of capitalism greatly under-achieves the wealth-generative capacity of the global business sphere. Through inter-firm team work businesses can produce a result which is greater than the mere sum of their stand-alone results and annually produce many trillions of dollars of additional wealth.
This realization of the latent potential of business can be achieved by simply adding to each firm's existing strategy, the focus of maximizing collaboration with each other business in the industry segment. Rather than isolation and vulnerability each business will experience the power of being part of a greater whole, and will as a result produce much greater wealth than if its current isolationist course was maintained.
A significant portion of the added wealth can be automatically transferred to a separate fund dedicated to financing solutions to the world's serious economic and socio-ecological problems. As a result countless new jobs can be created in areas intended to safeguard the future of mankind.
Another portion can be applied to development of the technologies, products and services of the future so as to ensure the ongoing progress of life. But even with these allocations the amount of the extra wealth retained by each individual business will make it much richer than would be possible without collaboration. The additional earnings and chance to contribute so significantly to the common good should be a strong inducement for the business sphere to adopt this new approach.
By broadening an individual business' strategy to include inter-firm collaboration there will be some impact on the business' freedom. Putting attention and resources into defeating other firms will no longer be a viable strategy. But what firm will still desire this kind of freedom when the damage inflicted on other businesses only reduces what can be gained from them through collaboration.
So, there will be no real loss of freedom as a result of infusing our present form of capitalism with inter-firm coordination and cooperation. And because there will be enormous gains in our ability to foster the common good, this new approach can clearly be seen as a better version of capitalism.
For more than twenty five years Warren Bellis has worked in the field of mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, conducting in-depth study of the ways that businesses can cooperate to create extra wealth, beyond that possible without inter-business collaboration. Concerned about our future and driven by the belief that we can produce the extra wealth needed to address the situation, Warren is promoting awareness of a needed economic adjustment he refers to as Global Economic Optimization. Visit Warren's blog site.
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