I was speaking last night with a friend of mine who wants to work out a new wise thing about business. My thought on this: basically, it is unlikely that you can work out a way to make an hour seventy minutes long. So, wannabe business gurus, don't dream about splitting the atom. What you need to do is:
1. find an eternal problem - time management, team dynamics, whatever - that is more than usually pertinent today - in conditions of recession, resource scarcity, whatever
2. find a way of describing how to deal with this problem that resonates with the present crop of people dealing with the problem - information overloaded, short-attention-spanned, matured in a period of prosperity
There aren't that many problems in the world, and there aren't that many solutions, but they always feel new to the people facing them, so if you can come up with a way of tooling an eternal verity to a specific situation, then you are being genuinely innovative and helpful. This, wannabe business gurus, is my advice.*
* As you will have spotted, this derives, like everything, from good historical practice. Every generation needs a new definitive history of the Nazis, because different things about that story are differently relevant to different generations. Ten years ago, in Fukuyama's post-historical present, the driving historiographical concern of the books I was reviewing was the location of decision-making. It was interesting, it helped you understand how big organisations operated on a minute level, and so on.
But since 9/11, and especially since the regime changes in the middle east, the focus has shifted to what constitutes effective governance. What kind of institutions and processes produce effective results in terms of security, stability and legitimacy?
A. I worry I've blogged about this before; and B. This is just a trend I think I noticed over a few hundred books - it is faintly conceivable that I am wrong.
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