Robert Peston the BBC’s business editor has picked on on some of the themes (e.g. mutualisation) I have.  In his blog entry today, one of the telling passages is this

They (bankers) didn’t want to see themselves as the infrastructure of the economy, that couldn’t and shouldn’t attempt to push up their profits at an accelerating rate. Somehow it was a bit too humiliating to be no more than the pipework for the real generators of wealth, companies with genuinely new services, real products and real technology.

So bankers created and exploited new “financial technology” that enriched themselves (for a while, at least) and was supposedly benefiting all of us by providing unlimited quantities of credit at astonishingly cheap rates.

At last it is being recognised that “real wealth creation” is about commercialising new intellectual property and not financial engineering.  In my view, this is what capitalism should be about and where the real rewards should be found.  Most large mature businesses that don’t generate genuinely new ideas (rather than just process improvement) are really utilities and need to recognise that they have to satisfy the needs a broader stakeholder community.

The winners from this recession are likely to be mutuals like John Lewis, Co-op Financial Services and, in the recycling services sector, Valpak.  Shareholder owned businesses that want to compete will have to behave much more like mutuals and balance the needs of customers, shareholders, staff, management and broader society.

Stakeholder analysis and management is the now the critical skill for senior managers!