Umair Haque

I wanted to like this book a lot. I follow Umair Haque on Twitter and enjoy his commentary. I should have looked more closely at that commentary however, because there is a lesson there about the book. The New Capitalist Manifesto, while excitingly written and well laid out, has almost no new thinking in it whatsoever. Like Haque's tweets, which are largely retweets of other thinkers with an exclamation point terminated comment, the book is a simple repackaging of the seminal ideas of many books which I have already read. If you are new to the concepts of socially-responsible or for-benefit businesses and green capitalism, this book might serve as a good introduction to the field. Otherwise, you will find yourself engaging in a game of "I bet I can tell you what he will say next." Of the concepts in the book that I thought were novel, I found that his analysis and support of them were largely superficial.

I had expected deeper thought in this volume, and so I was very disappointed. It may be the case that if your expectations are different, the book will read better. But I would suggest that after you complete it, you read Alex Steffen, Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, Richard Florida, Clay Shirky, Roberto Verganti and William McDonough afterwards, so that you can get the depth that Haque lacks.

… (mais)

This is an inspiring manifesto[1] on how to move from "business" to "betterness". The core point is that business as usually seems to be stagnating. Capitalism as it's been practiced up to now can be seen as a system whose strength is in solving the ills of previous systems -- such as guilds with monopolies over production and employment. However, it doesn't go beyond that in providing the best set of tools to help people live satisfying lives.

For that, Haque argues, we need to move from business to betterness. Companies focused on betterness look at real wealth creation and destruction -- all of the various forms of human meaning and capital -- rather than just looking at how they can move dollars around the board in an often zero sum way.

Starting here, Haque talks about some core principles for embracing betterness. This is the heart of the book, but also where it gets frustrating at times. Haque wants to define a new paradigm. As such, his extensive use of new vocabulary makes sense. However, his use of greek terms to define various aspects of betterness can sometimes make it hard to remember exactly what is being talked about at the moment.

Overall, not perfect, but the ideas are super important and worth the few hours it takes to read.

[1] I.e., long on ideas, short on concrete details =)… (mais)