Thanks to Stowe Boyd’s Twittering I recently found Umair Haque’s articles at Harvard Business Publishing. My favourites are:

• Detroit’s 6 Mistakes and How Not to Make Them
• How To Be a 21st Century Capitalist
• A User’s Guide to 21st Century Economics

Whilst I’m not sure Haque has the right answers all of the time, I do think he’s asking the right questions, and it’s great to see someone challenging current business ideology so thoroughly. What worries me is that if he is right, then the aftermath of the current economic crisis will probably be longer, harder and more turbulent than we might have believed. If Haque is correct, then most of the worlds biggest corporations are all very vulnerable, because the policies and tactics that have sustained them during the 20th century won’t protect them now, and their executives are too ideologically tied in to those ideas to let them change. So we might be at the start of a decade which sees huge numbers of these corporations fail. To be sure, I’ll probably be happier with the new breed of corporations that replace them, but it’ll be a bumpy ride while it’s happening.

Still, it could be worse: at least I didn’t pick a career in Brand Management…