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Do you agree with the ideas presented in the article?

Should we start talking more about creativity, effectiveness and problem solving rather than focusing solely on resource allocation and efficiency?

I totally agree with the ideas presented in this article. Questioning capitalism after the 2008 crisis is more than a legitimate interrogation for many people.

Inequality of income has increased dramatically in the past decades in almost each country with a capitalistic structure. This is why one can wonder if the GDP index still represents a certain idea of progress in our societies as it takes only numbers into account. Indeed, growth is now only measures in monetary terms and thus does not represent true improvements in the life of human being. The idea of Bhutan’s Gross national happiness goes in the right way in measuring better real life improvements, even though it seems pretty unrealistic to implement.

On the other side businesses must take their responsibilities and stop following short-term objectives, which comes from the neoclassical theory of the 80s. This theory, which focuses on maximizing the shareholder value was said to maximize the overall economic efficiency and social welfare. Nowadays, we can clearly say that this theory has proven to be wrong, as maximizing shareholder values only increases the income of the owners of companies and not the general population.

Thus, companies must shift from maximizing shareholder value towards finding solutions to problem that really affects the life of people. Many multinationals have already started to tackle that issue ( cf danone) but it’s still a minority. Focusing more on long-term achievements would undoubtedly help companies to have a greater impact on the society.

Moreover, when it comes to creativity and problem solving, I believe entrepreneurs have a great role to play here as they think differently from big companies and can address problems with new solutions and perhaps a hint of recklessness that could definitely break the rules

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