Nina Montgomery — Does capitalism need a radical redesign to become more inclusive?

Earlier this year, I worked on two books—featuring insights from 40 executives—exploring corporate purpose and impact. A clear theme emerged: To ensure that new capitalism doesn’t look a lot like old capitalism, we need more than just good intentions. We need a radical redesign of business at the structural level. Here are three big design questions that I encourage all leaders to ask themselves if they’re serious about inclusive capitalism:

I don't think that use of highly abstract terms like "capitalism" and "socialism" are helpful without careful definition that involves articulation of the fundamentals of social, political and economic systems, in particular in relation to contemporary living and emergent opportunities/challenges.

This is about revisiting the design of a life-support system that developed organically but not naturally in the sense of not being influenced by human intervention.

Assumption that "natural laws" comparable to natural systems studied by the natural science also govern complex adaptive systems has not played well so far, especially in the case of social systems and the social systems, including economics.

The organic approach has not worked out satisfactorily either, as humanity now faces several existential crises of its own making — climate change, epidemics and technological poisoning, and nuclear winter.

There are three major issues to face. The first is analyzing the design problem correctly, the second is developing a satisfactory solution, and the third is scaling it up. This latter involves two major issues, the first being technological, scaling at this level is a huge challenge, and the second being political, getting global concerted action from governments of nations with diverse interests has been elusive.

Fast Company

Does capitalism need a radical redesign to become more inclusive?
Nina Montgomery, designer at IDEO and a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford where she studies business and systems change