“youth seems to have advantages in innovation: everything is possible, knowledge is fresh, obligations are few and reputation is not at risk.”

Innovation can occur in products – we see this clearly in the field of mobile technology, for example – as well as in processes and services. Depending on the impact of innovation on environmental conditions, it can be classified as breakthrough innovation or incremental innovation.

Any environment, business, culture or otherwise will be shaped by innovation that evolves through periods of incremental change, and will be punctuated by innovative breakthroughs that either enhance or destroy the existing competence of firms and the individuals that make them up.

Incremental innovation creates changes through cumulative processes until a major advance that creates discontinuity ruptures the beginning point altogether.

Through incremental innovative improvements in products, for example, the underlying technology is both enhanced and extend, and thus reinforced as an established technical order as well as a socio-political one.

Individuals with a lot of experience are usually the best at carrying out these incremental improvements – we saw this with Steve Jobs as he turned Apple into the market-leading brand it is today.

Generally, younger people are more effective at bringing about breakthrough innovation by creating new technology that disrupts old ways of working and thinking. Major innovations can represent technical advances so significant that no increase in scale, efficiency, or design can make older technologies competitive with new technology whether product, process or service.

Again as an example we can look to Steve Job’s younger self, driving innovation at Pixar and then designing, developing and marketing the now ubiquitous Apple products.

Older, more experienced people may work alongside younger risk-takers in bringing innovation to a company. It is not for one group or the other to stake a claim on innovation – as we have seen, both types of individual are needed to bring about the different kinds of change that happen within a lifecycle of a business.

What is really needed – both in business and in government and beyond – is a culture of innovation. Often vested interests prevent innovation from fully emerging. There are many innovative patterns that are bought into by Western governments, only to be stored away and not implemented. For example, there are alternatives to oil, but due to investments in oil through vested interests many other innovative alternatives that could replace its use are not supported.

This does not have to be the case, as we can clearly see in the case of Japan, which has a culture of improvement of processes, or “change for the better”, captured in the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen. This philosophy teaches people to eliminate waste and to increase productivity, and encourages all – not just CEOs – to implement this and look out for opportunities for amelioration.

It is important to remember too that innovation can come in many forms, not just through business. Spain has a strong culture of innovation when it comes to architectural design, for example the ‘Metropol Parasol’ or ‘The World’s Largest Wooden Structure’ which opened in Seville, which can be seen as part of a long tradition encompassing the surreal modernist buildings of Gaudi and many others. These buildings could be also be compared to Dubai’s ambitious architectural projects, which double are important both in terms of business and in driving the way that people think about planning for the modern city.

A recent article by Dominic Barton in the Harvard Business Review, titled “Capitalism for the Long Term”, raises a relevant and fundamental question: do we have a leadership challenge or do we have a fundamental shift of philosophy concerning the nation-state in terms of how markets are being guided today?

At this point in time the jury is out as to which of the two options really is going to gain favour. On the one hand, taking a long-term view of capital, and having a powerful top team and a supportive board that is not just driven by quarterly returns demanded by the financial market and investors, holds weight. If this became a movement and investment decisions are made on a much longer-term basis, new thinking in terms of leadership philosophy and approach is necessary. However, there is evidence to support that this probably is not going to take place. The research indicates that the banks and the funds are going to go for exactly the same sorts of investment areas that led us to this global financial crisis.

President Roosevelt said, “We don’t have open markets, we have privileged markets”.  Supporting these sentiments I am noticing how organisations are progressively merging with each other. Various sectors are now being run by just a few major organisations. The term Roosevelt used was oligarchy and this has now become our reality.  We do not have open markets; we have open and free markets for those who have extensive capital to invest.

So does that ultimately mean the end of markets? I suspect the answer is no. But there is going to be a change of market, where the infrastructure requirements of society are now going to have to be given priority based on longer-term needs. Water, energy, housing, poverty, all the major issues which require partnership between financial services and government over a 25­ to 50-year period are going to have to be given priority.

In a sense, having a socialised capital market is going to have an interesting effect on markets as we know them. The irony is, they will probably become more buoyant because as you start working on big projects that are going to involve big society over a considerable period of time, you are going to need innovation. As such, the markets will probably become far more entrepreneurial, far more concerned with technology development and innovation, less concerned with concentrating resources on mergers and acquisitions and as a result we would really have more free and open markets.

So capitalism for the long term is probably going to mean a change of capital structures, not a change of markets and for many people in society this is probably going to be of tremendous advantage. For those that it will disadvantage, will be the few that fundamentally are making short-term gain when our capital should be used for long-term investment. Those that are making short-term gain will probably be quite vocal in resisting the movement towards socialised capital.

It is absolutely right that the press and the media should bring to the surface the social issues that we face, particularly one as worrying as the collapse of the financial system. I can see why MPs would wish to take the line of blaming greedy and selfish bankers and an insensitive press and media. The reason we have such problems is that both corporation and government had a powerful and implicit understanding to continue taking a derivative position in the market that would ultimately lead to the collapse that we are now experiencing.

Heads of State meeting at Davos still seem to believe that we can go back to the way we were before, if only we could get rid of the right wing neoliberal influence that stimulated the current phase of greed. However, we can no longer afford to have liberal economics as the basis for our global way of working. Our concern is to have a much more sensitive social democracy that allows for cosmopolitanism, sustainability and investing for a long term future. Why for example should be continue with quarterly reporting?  Why do we not have a much closer relationship between citizen, corporation and state, ensuring that the wealth creation process does not focus on shareholder value but on stakeholder benefit?

On this basis we need a balance of power whereby smaller countries can better represent themselves on a global stage. The only way forward is for a region to become a country. If we take Europe as an example, Europe becomes a country and the former countries of Europe become states of Europe. By having a European Parliament where emphasis will be placed on the lower house, the forum of the citizen, social policies can be created which will prevent the old Anglo American boom and bust cycles and allow for long term growth and investment.

The recent reporting on what we need to do to get ourselves out of this global downturn has largely concentrated on the economic levers that we need to pull in order to dig ourselves out of the present crisis. What needs to be understood is that we face a global political problem and not just an economic problem. Europe in particular needs to politically reposition and allow a mass market of 480 million consumers to influence the world in very different ways from the Anglo Americans of the last century.

The shareholder value philosophy of pedalling management techniques to literally thousands of students, and by so doing limiting their horizons to units of three months, is seriously flawed. The alternative is stakeholder value thinking and practice, which requires delving deep into concerns of corporate responsibility, the future role and contribution of boards, and the nature of the business/government interface. Such considerations have been given minimal attention.

So far, I am with Martin Parker. Think broader, dig deeper and see beyond quarterly profit targets. Yet, Martin Parker argues on behalf of Business Schools promoting a new capitalism. Why? It is this point that has to be challenged for it is completely unclear as to what is meant by a new capitalism.

Rethinking about what lies in the public good versus what aspects of an economy should be exposed to market forces is a critical consideration. The last thing we want to learn about is redundant financial instruments and techniques involving share swaps and trading schemes. The integration of management application with policy design, history and philosophy should be the basis of the Business School curriculum for the future.

We also cannot forget about geo-political analysis, the other important element of this curriculum platform. We are not just entering a new form of capitalism, but we are about to embark on a very different geo-political journey triggered by the collapse of short-termist capitalism. How nation states are going to position themselves for supremacy in a world of debt and diminishing resources is going to be interesting to observe. Those with the capacity will draw on their military strengths to control markets and take ownership of ores, often minerals and carbon based fuels. This is going to be our future. All of this is conveniently forgotten in Business School teachings.

Faced with a dynamic if not turbulent future, should we not be preparing our executives to both understand and meaningfully converse about the corporate/government interface? I believe we should, particularly as nation states will continue to confront each other, fundamentally redesigning the business landscape.

For all CEOs, the likelihood of being dismissed for poor performance in a given year is only 2.1 percent. Given this data, it is not surprising that the correlation between stock performance and dismissal is generally not significant. Indeed, the very worst-performing chief executives – those in the bottom decile, whose companies’ two-year stock price had fallen by 25 percent in absolute terms and whose companies had under­performed their regional industry peers by 45 percent – had only a 5.7 percent probability of termination.

These findings are not a huge surprise to me. CEOs need time to adjust to their new role and develop the vision it was the chairman’s job to steward. Perhaps boards are becoming more willing to give the CEO more time, or, as Karlsson, Neilson and Webster hypothesize, there isn’t a large enough pool of candidates to take over the top spot.

But it’s interesting to note how now that he’s the democratic candidate, he’s moved back towards the center the way American candidates often do to appeal to the greatest percentage of the electorate. One example: in the past Obama made a large issue of campaign finance reform and limiting the amount of public funding a candidate can use-however there isn’t a limit if you only use private funding and Obama has decided to go that way. His supporters say he’s doing what it takes to win; others more cynical believe his message of change is being diluted and he’s just a traditional politician after all.

Obama became a master of conveying a vision and getting people on board during the primary season. If traditional Washington politics force him to abandon his vision, he may suffer for it in the general election.

What Heinz had done was come up with a condiment that pushed all five of these primal buttons.  The taste of Heinz’s ketchup began at the tip of the tongue, where our receptors for sweet and salty first appear, moved along the sides, where sour notes seem the strongest, then hit the back of the tongue, for umami and bitter, in one long crescendo.  How many things in the supermarket run the sensory spectrum like this?

I wonder if this was as intentional as the vision that changed Heinz from an unromantic pickle and ketchup company into a multi-dimensional, international corporation.