Prominently displayed in the latest issue of The Economist is an article entitled, 'The endangered public company: The rise and fall of a great invention, and why it matters' For those who read The Future 101, this isn't a great revelation. Not only do they know that the Death of Capitalism results in the fall, though not death, of the large, publicly traded, hierarchical corporation. As the Economist points out, that isn't entirely a bad thing. Much of what made the corporation so successful in the Industrial Age is what is making it ill suited to the Information Age.
The purpose of this piece is not to list the shortcomings of the corporation. That is done briefly on one of the pages here and in great detail in the premium site. Rather the point is that much of the Transformation, in a confused way, is reaching the conscious level of the dying Industrial Age elites.
The Economist knows nothing about the rise of the Enterprise Network or the fundamental changes that are coming in our apprehension of productive activities in our lives, nor does it fully appreciate the implications of the streamlined corporate balance sheet or exploding market to book values. Consequently, it sees the death of the publicly traded corporation as a bad thing.
We understand that it will enable enterprise formation, increase innovation and, ultimately, spread net worth more evenly across society. People will, to a much greater extent, own the enterprise within which they engage in productive activity.
The IPO will not be the universally preferred end point and pay off. Rather enterprises will be grown for their cash flow. Cash flow will be reinvested in new ventures rather than used for mergers and acquisition. There may be a time when global economic growth will slow down to the point that, once again, cash cows are seen as liabilities rather than assets. However, that time is unlikely to be prior to 2040.
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