The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business

Instead of just producing goods, a constructive capitalist makes betters—bundles of products and services that make a difference to people, communities, and society by having a tangible, meaningful, enduring positive impact on them.

Twenty-first-century organizations don’t manage by monologues solemnly intoned from the inside out and the top down. They manage through dialogue that starts from the outside in and the bottom up. By democratizing decision making in a multitude of ways, constructive capitalists are able to allocate resources with maximum agility.

The five cornerstones we ultimately distilled are so familiar to CEOs and clerks alike that they are invisible fixtures of everyday economic life: value chains as the means of production, value propositions as the means of positioning, strategy as the means of competition, protecting marketplaces as the means of advantage, and inert, fixed goods as

the second axiom is about maximization: the fundamental challenge facing countries, companies, and economies in the twenty-first century is creating more value of higher quality, not just low-quality value in greater quantity.

Deeper than voting, deliberation is rich with information and knowledge. It allows participants to unpack and detail the differing rationales and perspectives that lead to different votes in the first place.

Participation means that those affected most by managerial decisions have the right to take part in them. Deliberation means that participants can reason, not just vote, to reveal different perspectives and values. Association means public spaces for that deliberation to take place unencumbered. And dissent is the only path to a truly meaningful, a

All impossible industries, markets, and categories have two things in common. They didn’t just meet existing needs in slightly better ways. They met needs that were never met or barely met before—ever. They met those needs not at a significant price premium, but at a point of price equivalence or at a disruptively lower price.

Competitive strategies say, “Here’s how we’ll get people to buy our stuff, no matter what.” A philosophy says, “Here’s how we’ll make stuff people want to buy, no matter what.”

Disruption happens when construction erases maximum destruction: when new cornerstones are brought to places and spaces where borrowing benefits from or shifting costs to people, communities, and society is—yawn—just business as usual. Constructive strategy is most disruptive where there is a growing surplus of destruction, because that is where th