Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
If you wanted a glib way to sum up how the economy works today, you could say we've gone from hardware to software, from selling tangible things such as railroads, cars, and airplanes to selling less tangible ones such as information services. In fact, services grew from 31 percent of U.S. economic output in 1950 to 55 percent in 1998. In Future Wealth, Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer explain why they think we're headed toward a new stage of economic development in which "human and intellectual capital [is] the most highly valued resource."
Remember how David Bowie sold Bowie Bonds a few years back, essentially leasing out his future earnings from royalties and concert revenues so he could get $55 million in cash up front? That's just the beginning, say the authors. Today thousands of people we've never heard of accept signing bonuses to go to work for companies, and soon many exceptionally talented individuals will imitate Bowie's move--sell stock in their future earnings. Regardless of whether we're fortunate enough to offer ourselves to the financial markets in the form of stocks or bonds, or even to command signing bonuses, each of us has unprecedented potential to become wealthy, the authors posit. More and more, our salaries will become chump change compared to the money we make from investments. Add to that the supposition that we carry around untold capital in our brains, and Future Wealth shows a future that we'll definitely want to be a part of. --Lou Schuler
From The Industry Standard
Big, important ideas beg to be carefully spun out in big, important books. Future Wealth, unfortunately, is long on big ideas but short on the vision of a big book.
Picking up where their 1998 bestseller Blur left off, Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer draw an enticing financial road map for the next two decades. The premise of Future Wealth is simple: The radical economic changes brought about by Net-enabled connectivity are driving economics away from tangible assets and toward a greater reliance on intangibles like intellectual capital. The authors' vision of the future of wealth involves three basic themes: risk as opportunity, human capital as the key force in financial markets and effective safety nets as the linchpin of social order.
But after a brief primer on economics, which asserts that current B-school economic theory already belongs in a history course, this vision begins to get, well, blurry. Maybe a better metaphor for the authors' optical flaw is tunnel vision. Davis and Meyers simplistically predict that within a few years, forward-thinking parents could be taking their daughters public as effortlessly as driving them to soccer practice. They cite such examples as the team of Web engineers that tried - unsuccessfully - to auction itself off on
The implications of these not-too-distant future scenarios are hardly desirable. Picture yourself having breakfast at McDonald's. You're thrilled because you bought your coffee right before the real-time price board bumped it up by a dime. Sitting with coffee and an Egg McMuffin at your table's Bloomberg terminal, you begin tracking your investments - including your own market cap, and perhaps that of your daughter, your friends and coworkers, and the latest addition to your stable: Keanu Reeves (the action movies fund). You are at one with the market, oblivious to the guy waiting behind you in line for the terminal.
Ultimately, a lack of attention to surrounding details is what unravels the silver lining from Future Wealth. If human capital is rolled into the financial markets, and individuals and groups are bought and sold like stocks and mutual funds, serious issues like insider trading, rampant speculation and daytrading addiction take on entirely new dimensions.
Is a phone call to your parents about a job offer considered insider trading if Mom and Dad are among your shareholders? Will office gossip dampen investor enthusiasm for your IPO? Will your stock tank if you're diagnosed with cancer? Will you be expected to file your medical records and diaries with the SEC?
On the book's last page, the authors address some real-world potholes in their vision: "Will daytrading replace caring? Will profit-taking replace philanthropy? Possibly." For a book built on assured predictions, this 11th-hour ambivalence begs for a reassessment of the preceding pages.
Future Wealth raises more questions than it can answer. Fortunately, as they did with Blur, the authors have created a Web site where the exchange of ideas can continue. Some healthy skepticism seems wise.
Future Wealth
Future Wealth,Stanley M. Davis,Christopher Meyer,Harvard Business School Press,1578511941,Business & Economics,Business / Economics / Finance,Business/Economics,Economics - Theory,Equality,Human Resources & Personnel Management,Income,Personal Finance,Personal Finance - Investing,Personnel And Human Resources Management,Wealth,New Economy
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