Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Radical Individualism and the Common Good

A recent NY Times OpEd, The Downside of Liberty, has generated quite a bit of discussion.  It was written by Kurt Andersen, - an American author and host of the award-winning public radio program Studio 360.  The OpEd’s main thesis is that ever since the late 1960s, a radical American individualism has been unleashed on multiple fronts. 

“What has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late ’60s isn’t contradictory or incongruous.  It’s all of a piece.  For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant.  Selfishness won.” 

“ . . . A kind of tacit grand bargain was forged between the counterculture and the establishment, between the forever-young and the moneyed.  Going forward, the youthful masses of every age would be permitted as never before to indulge their self-expressive and hedonistic impulses.  But capitalists in return would be unshackled as well, free to indulge their own animal spirits, with fewer and fewer fetters in the forms of regulation, taxes or social opprobrium.” 

Is is generally assumed that while liberals love the ’60s legacies of social freedoms, - e.g., civil rights, feminism, the sexual revolution, - conservatives hate them and blame these social changes for whatever they don’t like about contemporary life.  Conventional wisdom would say that liberals won and conservatives lost the culture wars of the the sixties.  Not quite, says Andersen, going against the prevailing narrative.

The USAID-Citi Mobile Money Alliance

Last month, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Citi announced a partnership aimed at accelerating mobile money adoption in developing countries.  The partnership will initially focus its work in Colombia, Haiti, Indonesia, Kenya, and the Philippines.  Its efforts will later be extended to Peru, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. 

“Of the five billion mobile phone users worldwide, nearly two billion lack access to banking services, instead relying on cash transactions that expose them to potential theft, fraud or loss, and high-cost lending and remittance providers that leave them vulnerable to endless debt and high fees,” said the joint press release, and later added: 

“USAID and Citi share a common belief that expanding the adoption of mobile financial solutions is a critical economic development strategy with the potential to drive growth and increase financial access and security for the developing world’s poor population.  The effort seeks to strengthen alternatives to a cash-based system that is inefficient, costly, and prone to corruption.” 

The digital technology revolution that has been transforming just about every aspect of life around us - from the way we interact with each other to the way we conduct business, - is now poised to usher the concept of mobile digital money to every corner of the world.

Strategy and Execution in an Increasingly Complex World

I recently read a good, short article in strategy+business (s&b), the management magazine published by the global consulting firm Booz & Company.  Its title asks the question: “Strategy or Execution: Which Is More Important?,” to which it adds the tagline:  “Many business leaders think they’d rather have great execution than superior strategies, but you can’t have the first without the second” 

According to the article, many business leaders think that “strategy doesn’t matter as long as you are producing results. . . Often, this is because they associate strategy with analysis and execution with getting things done, and they attribute more value to doing than to analyzing.” 

But, the article goes on to succinctly defines strategy as “. . . the series of choices you make on where to play and how to win to maximize long-term value.  Execution is producing results in the context of those choices. Therefore, you cannot have good execution without having good strategy.” 

This interplay between strategy and execution has evolved over time.  Twenty-thirty years ago, the business world was arguably less complex, slower moving and more predictable.  Strategic planning involved looking out several years into the future, - generally three to five years, longer for technologies and products requiring extensive R&D.  The lines of business had the operational responsibility for executing the agreed upon strategy, including the production of goods and services, dealing with customers and business partners, and achieving quarterly and yearly financial targets.  Operations and strategy were distinct parts of the business, one focusing on running the business in the present, the other one looking out into the future. 

But, in today’s fast changing and unpredictable business environments, these time cycles are increasingly overlapping.  It is difficult to do strategic planning beyond a one to three year timeframe.  Unpredictable, unanticipated events require strategic corrections in even shorter timeframes.  Both strategy and operations need to continuously adjust to fast changing market conditions.  Our strategic planning now has to incorporate flexible execution.  Successful companies - especially market leaders being chased by small and large competitors - must achieve a delicate balance between carefully managing their existing operations, and formulating the appropriate strategies that will propel them into the future.

Towards a Hyperconnected, Digital Economy

For the past couple of decades we have been talking about the evolution to a new, Internet-based digital economy.  This transformation keeps gathering speed, as we transition from the connected economy of PCs, browsers and web servers to our increasingly hyperconnected economy of smart mobile devices, cloud computing and broadband wireless networks.

Everyone pretty much agrees that there is a transformation of historical proportions underway, propelling us from the industrial society of the past two centuries to an information society that's in the process of being defined.  But there is less agreement on the impact of this emerging digital economy on our personal behaviors and attitudes, on our communities and institutions and on political and economic events around the globe.

The key changes brought about by the digital economy are succinctly summarized by Mark Stahlman in this recently published blog, Digital Economics 101.  Stahlman, an IT strategist and financial analyst, is co-founder of TMT Strategies, a research company focused on the impact of digital technologies on the economy and society.  I have known and worked with him for over twenty years, and serve as an advisor to TMT Strategies.

According to Stahlman, four major trends characterize the transition to this 21st century digital economy: globalism-to-localism, wants-to-needs, specialization-to-DIY (do-it-yourself), and institutionalism-to-personalism.  I’d like to devote the bulk of my comments to the first of these trends, - “From global expansion and world-unifying ambitions (globalism) to local concerns and direct involvement (localism),” - as it is arguably the one requiring most clarification.

Rethinking Personal Data

In 2010, the World Economic Forum (WEF), launched a project on Rethinking Personal Data.  The project brought together experts from business, government, academia and end user privacy and rights groups to examine the challenges and opportunities involved in properly managing the explosive growth of personal data in the digital world.  In January of 2011 they published their first report, - Personal Data: the Emergence of a New Asset Class.  

The report’s overall point of view is that personal data is a new asset class touching all aspects of society.  It is potentially as valuable a resource in the 21st century as heavily traded physical goods like oil have been in the past hundred years.  The report recommends the development of a principled, collaborative and balanced personal data ecosystem that is capable of evolving and improving over time.

This past May, the WEF released a second report, Rethinking Personal Data: Strengthening Trust.  I found it to be an excellent overview on the subject.  It observes that throughout history, economic value creation has been linked to the ability to move and trade physical goods.  Similarly, “data needs to move to create value.  Data sitting alone on a server is like money hidden under a mattress. It is safe and secure, but largely stagnant and underutilized.”

But, personal data lacks the trading rules and policy frameworks that exist for widely traded physical assets.  As a result, there is little trust among the key stakeholders, - individuals, governments and the private sector, - which could undermine its long-term potential.