Evidently so. Or at least that's the view of two fascinating articles: A World Awash in Money, from Bain and Company, and A Capitalist's Dilemma, from Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen.
The basic point of both articles is capital used to be a scarce resource. Because it was scarce, our management methods and metrics are designed to minimize its use.
But both argue that today capital is both cheap and plentiful. Key quote from the Bain article:
... the relationship between the financial economy and the underlying real economy has reached a decisive turning point. The rate of growth of world output of goods and services has seen an extended slowdown over recent decades, while the volume of global financial assets has expanded at a rapid pace. By 2010, global capital had swollen to some $600 trillion, tripling over the past two decades. Today, total financial assets are nearly 10 times the value of the global output of all goods and services.
Both also argue that we need to rethink how we manage because of this shift.
As Bain puts it, a major impact of the shift to capital becoming abundant has been "...to paralyze, confuse and distort investment decisions."
Christensen says abundant capital means the rules of business and government have changed, but how we manage hasn't. He says "... we’ve never taught our apprentices that when capital is abundant and certain new skills are scarce, the same rules are the wrong rules."
To be honest, we're still trying to figure this trend out, and particularly what it means for small business.
But given who's talking about this - one of the world's top strategy consulting firm and one of the world's top business gurus - we think it's worth being aware of.
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