Introduction
Let's put our money where
our mouths are...
Our Atomic framework leads
us to think some pretty radical thoughts about business structure. Here are
some of them <our lawyers remind us to say that these are illustrative and
do not represent criticism of the institutions involved>...
The next twelve
weeks
- Through a chance encounter
on the World Wide Web you connect with someone you have not heard of or spoken
to in twenty years. Despite the passage of time a new level of intimacy emerges
between you both, and exciting business possibilities evolve.
- Your son declines a
graduate job offer with IBM in preference to a year of world travel. The staff
at IBM are not surprised – despite the depressed employment market,
even the best corporations find it difficult to recruit the best graduates.
- Your father realizes
that falls in the stock market means that retirement in his fifties is no
longer an option. Instead, he invests all his surplus funds in bricks and
mortar, bypassing traditional savings channels.
- An old friend’s
business unit is demerged from its parent company. He feels energized by the
smaller management team and closer contact with customers and suppliers, and
clocks up an eight-hour week for the first time in his life.
- A leading pharmaceutical
giant announces that it intends to withdraw entirely from R&D activities,
currently exceeding $2 billion of investment a year. Its CEO stresses the
need to focus on global marketing and sales in its drive to retain its number
one position in the sector. It announces alliances with over eighty biotech
and drug discovery companies to fill the R&D gap.
- General Electric (GE)
opens up its own stock market to trade over one hundred separately quoted
companies within its own corporate portfolio. Investors, both institutions
and individuals, are encouraged to swap their GE shares for a portfolio of
GE securities ranging from power and lighting to finance and professional
services.
- AOL-Time Warner, one
of the largest mergers in history, throws in the towel and announces its intention
to break apart into five separate companies. This ends what many regard as
the largest destruction of shareholder value in modern times.
The next twelve months
- You are told that, due
to the continuing harsh economic climate, your services to a Global 2000 firm
are no longer required. You receive a handsome pay-off and the promise of
part-time work that never transpires. After a few weeks of personal doubt
and uncertainty, you fall into a new and more enjoyable pattern of portfolio
employment by deciding what your real competencies are and applying them to
the marketplace.
- Ford sells off its premium
brand car companies, including Aston Martin, Jaguar, Range Rover and Volvo
to the French fashion and perfumes company LVMH. In an unprecedented bid to
return to its core business it continues to provide manufacturing and logistics
services to LVMH, encouraging the new owner to concentrate on brand extensions
and product innovation.
- HP completes the world’s
largest outsourcing deal with a Taiwan industrial consortium. It transfers
all manufacturing and supply chain tasks to its Eastern Partner in return
for a 25% share of the new global manufacturing platform and a sign-on bonus
of $5 billion cash to cover the asset value. Its workforce is reduced from
140,000 to less than 40,000 worldwide.
- Affected by the downturn
in merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, Goldman Sachs decides to spin
off all activities in this area and forms a joint venture with leading accountants
Deloitte & Touche. The new entity takes equity positions in each of its
M&A activities and draws on capital funds from a variety of investment
banks.
- Nedcor, a relatively
unknown South African bank, bids for and wins the outsourcing of Lloyds TSB’s
core transaction processing platform, effectively gutting its retail operations.
The deal takes the form of a new global vehicle based in South Africa’s
low-wage economy that is soon touting for similar business from the leading
retail banks in Europe and the USA
- After almost fifteen
years of relocation planning and deliberation, HSBC decides to abandon its
new thirty-storey building in Canary Wharf in favour of smaller offices co-located
with its business interests. As well as creating better connections to customers,
this avoids the vulnerability of thousands of workers concentrated in one
building.
- Shell makes an unprecedented
announcement – it intends to spin off its global retail operations and
to concentrate on oil exploration and production. McDonald’s registers
interest in acquiring more than 30,000 filling stations – expanding
its own footprint by a factor of two.
- Private equity house
KKR is launched on to the NY stock exchange and becomes the second most valued
stock after Microsoft. Its principals each become wealthier than Bill Gates
and Larry Ellison put together
And the next twelve years?
- The average employment
contract for staff working in California will come down from its current duration
of eighteen months to less than thirty days – or one working month.
The concept of permanent employment will be consigned to the annals of history.
- Upwardly mobile professionals
appoint personal agents to manage their career. In return, agents take a share
of annual wages and stock options as their fee. Other service companies step
in to take charge of domestic obligations such as house cleaning, financial
administration and holiday planning.
- The first trillionaire
is crowned. He has amassed his fortune in just under ten years as a result
of applying intelligent agent technology to web-based search engines –
his corporation finds what you need on the Internet. A PhD from Stanford University
in 2003, he had now immediate expectations of making money from his research
thesis. He is rapidly overtaken by the main investor of a biotech company
that is the first to gain approval for a drug that arrests ageing. Neither
of these corporations employs more than fifty people.
- Will Smith, film star
and singer, becomes the first black president of the United States, where
public appeal and charisma are recognized as the essential differentiating
qualities of a successful politician. In the UK the Conservative Party, bereft
of personalities, slips into quiet obscurity.
- Educationalists abandon
fact-based learning in favour of discovery and experience. Virtual reality
becomes as commonplace as personal computers in classrooms all over the USA
and Europe.
- The most eminent consultancy
firm in the world (you know who we mean) closes after the partners refuse
to provide any more working capital to keep the firm alive. The only saleable
asset will be the research institute that generates more than sufficient equity
funds to finance all existing partner pensions.
- A global account team
working for IBM undertakes a leveraged buyout, raising over $1 billion to
purchase its profitable current customer relationship. The team consists of
no more than twenty staff and exploits its new asset by forming multiple relationships
with IT, HR and finance service providers.
- Device-to-device traffic
exceeds for the first time all other traffic across the World Wide Web. Much
of our personal communication is delegated to software agents embedded in
our hand-held terminals, laptops, clothes and other intelligent devices.
- Governments impose crippling
taxes on organizations of five hundred or more people to discourage inefficiencies
in their economic systems. They will also consider introducing laws to limit
the size of government departments to fewer than two hundred staff as a means
of convincing the electorate that they are serious about delivering value-for-money
services.
- Of all the professions
and degree courses, Digital Arts becomes the most popular and highly remunerated
of all careers in the Western world. Universities such as Cambridge and Harvard
vie with each other to offer such training, but Thames Valley – once
rated the worst UK University – excels above all these worthy institutions,
having been first in the field.