Bigger things I’m learning — reinforcing in my own mind — reading these business history books: whatever explanation anyone today is offering about current affairs of world — in news/commentary — almost always explanation is bigger picture, few levels higher, than apparent.
There is *always* an explanation beyond what everyone else is explaining today.
Amongst the many lessons learned (or rediscovered) in reading 20+ business history books so far this year: how “Shareholder capitalism” has completely changed the business of American (and world) business & how little it is explored & understood by business/B2B media today.
Another smaller (but very strategic lesson): the renaming of LBOs into Private Equity and Corporate Raiders into Activist Investors was a big PR win for no one except those two sectors.
That at almost every turn in last 200 years in America, many consumer, tech or media innovations we now know were delayed decades because big incumbents in all sectors worked to squash or delay them.
That monopoly is the inevitable state of business & it will happen no matter what in every sector unless common sense regulations/govt works for the benefit of the public. And even then big business will use regulation to squash disrupters.
That business education/MBA has done more harm than good in the current state of American business and state of inequality across our society. Study/predominance of finance became the business of MBAs and that led to where we are today.
That for all of American corporate life post Civil War era until now, business (and govt) has been about men and men alone, specifically white men. And when women figured, they only figured as one giant mass of consumers to influence. Anyone else was invisible.
That companies/organizations such as McKinsey/RAND/HBS/Chicago School/ have had so much influence in what America business state — and economy — is today & still little understood by many, least of all media writing about business/economy.
That small business never really stood a chance in America, not since post WWII, not on policy or even societal level, much as we have fake-worshipped at the altar of small business forever.
That the rise of service/intangibles economy in U.S., mirroring the financialization of everything — dominance of finance in business — has led to the great inequality & stagnating productivity we have in America, something I’ve learned in bits & pieces over multiple books.
This one I mentioned before: everything in business world is a cycle, and everything will repeat itself if only with different actors.
Another big picture lesson: that how recent American dominance is: from 16-19th century European businesses rules the world in monopolistic-quasi imperialist ways. American business dominance, the American century, was really only 20th century and may stop there.
That “science” of management, the effort started with Frederick Taylor, entered business schools, picked up by advertising men, really was the start of American century and way of management that led us to where we are today, a fully financialized/data world we are in today.
