The end of business?

It is 20 years since the philosopher Francis Fukuyama announced the end of history.  Buoyed by the end of the Cold War, he argued that the dominance of Western liberal democracy marked the end of man’s socio-cultural evolution.

Several conversations I’ve had recently have made we wonder if we’re now facing the end of business.  “Our problem,” said a senior manager in a manufacturing company, “is that ten years ago we placed our bets on emerging markets, but the growth there hasn’t been as great as we expected and now we don’t know where else to look.” “Shareholders gave us a comparatively easy ride during the recession the recession because they recognised that we all had to hold on, just to survive,” said another executive, “but now they’re starting to get impatient, but we don’t know how to create more value.”  Consulting firms, too, have problems: an HR firm in Switzerland was saying that much of their traditional advice around pensions investment is being held up by slow decision-making by the government:  “All the advisory firms here are in the same boat: we’ve run out of technical solutions and can’t do anything now other than lobby the government to move more quickly.”

A world without history was supposed to be a benign place (no wars or other conflicts), but business without progress is frankly terrifying.  The same products and services would be made and delivered in the same way; people would do the same work for decades.  There’d be no incentive to change jobs because the opportunities for career development would be negligible.  From a world which sometimes seems to be changing too quickly, we’d be in one which barely moves at all.

Businesses need new ideas about how they can create growth: one of the most common refrains we hear from senior executives is that they want consulting firms to take serious, concrete growth proposals to them.  Yet much of the thinking consulting firms have produced focuses on enabling growth (better customer segmentation, more agile processes, more informative analytics) still doesn’t address the fundamental question of where growth will come from.  Business schools are short on inspiration; Messiah-like gurus have been discredited; organisations are too busy chasing their tails to think strategically.

The real crisis isn’t economic, but around innovation.  Perhaps it’s time for consultants to step up and save the world.