The economy is in chaos, and many of the world’s richest countries are coming to terms with immense debt and a disenfranchised workforce. There are fewviable green franchises or business opportunities.
Dr. Bruce Piasecki, author of the forthcomingDoing More With Less: The New Way To Wealthsays that while this pressure cooker presents major challenges to business–and to society in genera–it also offers unique opportunities to the firms that recognize the wisdom of acting thriftily, and capitalize on them.
Insteading had the chance to ask Dr. Piasecki a few questions about this new approach to thinking about and doing business in a shifting economic paradigm. Here’s what he had to say:
INS: What’s the biggest difference between the path to wealth/success that you advocate in the book, and the way most people pursue it in today’s society and business world?
Dr. Piasecki:What I write about in Doing More With Less is both a forgotten and proven path of wealth thru industriousness and competitive frugality. Many greats have followed this path from Ben Franklin to the great World War II writer E. F. Schumacher in his work “Small is Beautiful.” But today its themes mean more to a world of 7 billion souls, with limited water, energy, and opportunity.
In my years as a management consultant working for large global firms, I find three competing things true:
1. Most people fall into patterns of professional discourse and entrenched spirals of peer argumentation. Lawyers, engineers, corporate planners get narrow, risk adverse.
2. I advocate that we can, and must, remember our first sense of being competitive in a different way and go back at it again and again, each day.
3. This primal self of invention and frugality allows new growth, even in mature adults. We must look at the full glory of creating and keeping wealth, not just the material gains that come from it, which includes the value of social capital. This is possible by learning from Ben Franklin – frugality, inventiveness, and diplomacy.
INS: Why is it so important for emerging companies to adopt a “doing more with less” mentality, rather than trying to emulate the status quo?
Dr. Piasecki:The “Doing More with Less” mentality is a healthy lens through which we can look at this newly globalized world of scarcity and alarm. You can see this in the 30 years of practice atmy firm, where firms as different as Warren Buffett’s Shaw Industries and Toyota found value in our approach to competitive frugality. Once you learn to participate in this new, larger form of social wealth creation, the world becomes a more intelligible and acceptable place. I also believe that operating in this mindset can help a new company flourish in a world that is likely to be capital- and carbon-restrained. This is why Doing More with Less is the mantra for success for a life, your family, your firm, whether large or small today. Franklin shows that we all must become frugal, innovative and peace loving again, as we all share this same boat and the same seas.
INS: What’s your perspective on the (very tech-based) collaborative consumption/P2P industry and their potential to impact the business world?
Dr. Piasecki:I find great promise here. We live in a swift and severe world, as I described inmy previous book. You may findbusiness opportunities and green franchisesat the ready. However, you can ride [the] with wave with more certainty and success if you consider the principles outlined in the personal narratives of Doing More With Less. The two books are sisters in a family that answers this question about new potential.
In addition, Social networks and the ability to share workloads among people in different parts of the world ties directly to my message. We do this every day in my management firm, where seasoned seniors work with new economist and recent college grads.
在一个联系日益紧密、透明度日益提高的世界,我们需要利用技术,以传播民主和全球福祉的方式实现最大的社会效益。我们必须改变机器,而不仅仅是法律,最重要的是,我们必须避免过度负债的危险舞蹈,再次成为自我决定。
Image Credit: Flickr –get directly down
Babslsays
Returning to the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, Bruce Piasecki shows how frugality and social responsibility produce creativity and wealth in the broadest sense. His voice is strong and his message is clear.
Babsl
Platte F Clarksays
这是一本重要的书,我很高兴能与布鲁斯合作,我们希望将其原则正式化为世界级的培训课程。节俭和繁荣是相辅相成的,Bruce的丰富经验和专业知识提供了实现这一目标的路线图。
Demetria Giannisissays
Bruce Piasecki’s book, “Doing More With Less,” delivers a clarion call to values-centered action as relevant to the general reader as it is for corporations. Ben Franklin’s principle of frugal inventiveness is confidently explored by Piasecki to address the Gordian knot of emergent global economic, environmental and social challenges.
In this most recent book, Piasecki’s builds on his vision for social response capitalism as the pathway to profitable corporate sustainability as first presented in his book “World, Inc.” Readers will gain a deeper understanding of the mutually reciprocal benefits of empowering teams by supporting a culture of disciplined frugality and innovation.
Piasecki urges readers to fully grasp the indisputable irrationality of projecting continued growth through consumption driven (and wasteful) mainstream economic models. His book offers a more optimistic future empowered by unleashing the self-organizing principle of frugal values that will be needed to profitably meet the needs of the world’s current population of seven billion people.
Demetria Giannisis
Corporate Innovation and Sustainabilty Consultant