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Umair Haque

Umair Haque focuses on how next-generation economics demand new approaches to strategy. His posts help managers anticipate and take advantage of these changes.

Obama's Seven Lessons for Radical InnovatorsNovember 5

It's a momentous day for America - and the world. Barack Obama is poised to take the reins of the Presidency.

So how did this unlikeliest of candidates do it? How did Obama utilize radically asymmetrical competition to shatter Washington's toxic, bitter 20th century status quo?

The most critical part of the story is the organization Obama built. Though conservatives are still arguing that Obama has little executive experience, nothing could be further from the truth.

Barack Obama is one of the most radical management innovators in the world today. Obama's team built something truly world-changing: a new kind of political organization for the 21st century. It differs from yesterday's political organizations as much as Google and Threadless differ from yesterday's corporations: all are a tiny handful of truly new, 21st century institutions in the world today.

Obama presidential bid succeeded, in other words, as our research at the Lab has discussed for the past several years, through the power of new DNA: new rules for new kinds of institutions.

So let's discuss the new DNA Obama brought to the table, by outlining seven rules for tomorrow's radical innovators.

1. Have a self-organization design. What was really diff

Why Traditional Recession Tactics Are Doomed To Fail This TimeOctober 21

How should boardrooms respond to the macro crisis? Is it just a case of recession-as-usual: budget-paring, personnel-slashing, and portfolio-trimming?

Not a chance. The tactics of recession-as-usual are neither necessary nor sufficient for firms to weather the global economic superstorm - because it's no ordinary squall, but a once-in-a-lifetime gale ripping up the very foundations of the global economic order. Rather, the macro crisis requires decision makers to confront fundamental transformation on three levels.

The first and simplest level is a change in global patterns of savings, investment, and consumption. For too long, the poor have financed the rich. China and other emerging markets have lent to the US so Americans could buy Hummers, McMansions, and Frappuccinos. But this never made sense -- it was deeply unsustainable; the macroeconomic equivalent of a giant planetary fossil fuel engine. The days of export-led growth -- and it's flipside, force-fed consumption -- are numbered.

Strategists in the boardroom face a new global macroeconomic picture. Overconsumption in developed countries must slow sharply, and capital must be redirected to long-run investment, especially in public goods. Conversely, emerging markets must shift from financing consumption in developed countries, and begin investing in the basic institutions of a vital microeconomic

Not a Great Depression, a Great RebalancingOctober 14

Over the last few days, I've had numerous emails from you asking: is the global financial system actually going to melt down? Will the various bailout packages on the table work?
Let's use those questions to dive into two of the five steps in the next-gen business construction kit we discussed here recently: how the macro landscape is changing, and what new DNA is.

Here's the good news. We're probably not in for a full-blown depression - one characterized by 25% unemployment, for example. We're probably in for a protracted period of stagnation and malaise. Japan's been going through one for the last two decades, and the Japanese banking crisis is the closest parallel to today's global pandemic.

Here's the bad news. Macroeconomists have a checklist of policies for fixing depressions, but not for reversing stagnation. Japan, for example, has been caught between the devil and the deep blue sea; it can't fix its economy without literally tearing it apart, and rebuilding the private sector from the ground up.

The reason is that stagnation isn't a financial phenomenon, but an institutional one: it's a product of bad DNA. And so a resolution to the macro crisis demands nothing than less than new DNA across every segment and sector of the economy.

Let's reverse that insight to sharpen it. The striking thing about today's economy isn't that lame

How to Build a Next-Gen Business NowSeptember 24

For the last ten days - as I've been predicting for the last few years both here and at bubblegen - a fire has raged through the heart of the global economy.

Central banks and governments are throwing money at an economic superstructure rotting from the inside - but given the severity of the situation, that's like trying to put out a fire by throwing Molotov cocktails at it.

So what should we do - what can we do - about it? Here's my answer.

The macro crisis tells us that it's time to get serious about what we've been discussing for the last few months: building a better kind of business. So here's a five-step construction kit for tomorrow's revolutionaries.

* * *

The first step in building next-generation businesses is to recognize the real problem boardrooms face - that we've moved beyond strategy decay. Building next-gen businesses depends on recognizing that they are not about new business models or even new strategies.

The stunningly total meltdown we just witnessed in the investment banking sector - the end of Wall St as we know it - was something far darker and mor

Where Is the Chrome in Your Strategy?September 4

Imagine what would happen if GM and Ford collaborated to invest in the components and architecture of a better public transport network -- and then licensed it for free to cities, states, and countries.

Imagine what would happen if pharma players directly invested in better hospitals and clinics -- instead of in trying to own the relationship with doctors, and furiously outspending one another when marketing blockbusters.

Imagine what would happen if Wal-Mart invested in town squares and parks -- instead of just in featureless warehouses draining what little vitality remains in already bleak exurbs.

Imagine what would happen if P&G and Unilever invested in people's opportunities for education, global mobility, and meaningful, authentic relationships with others  -- instead of just trying to control distribution channels, and then push-market more stuff to you.

That's a radically different vision for a better kind of business. One where the value that's created is authentic, durable, and meaningful to humans; one where your "unfair advantage" isn't simply just the flipside of my disadvantage; one where that illusion no longer narcotizes an entire economy.

Hopelessly naïve - right? Wrong. Today's revolutionaries are already bringing this vision to life, and using it to topple yesterday's most powerful and privileged incumbents. Radically better is not just what business must - and will - become: it is what business is