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Martin Wolf, Financial Times January 17 2007
'a brilliant, thought-provoking and wide-ranging book'
Management Today, June 2006
'a remarkable book...you must read it. It is unquestionably the most important business book of the year.'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly recommended if you work in business, economics or politics,
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This review is from: The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (Hardcover)
This book is well worth a read if you're interested in business, economics or politics. I've found myself turning back to re-read chapters over the past few months it's given so much food for thought.Complexity theory sounds scary. Eric Beinhocker shows that it isn't. He shows how simple and incredibly powerful it is as a way to explain what we see in the real world every day. The business reader gets an utterly compelling insight into why innovation in big businesses is so hard to pull off. I found myself having 'aha' moments about why innovation at the companies I've worked at is such a challenge. It also led me to think about why Google's seemingly chaotic strategy might just work and to build my own understanding about why services like YouTube and Skype are hard to predict but huge when they happen. Readers interested in economics see that complexity theory provides the economics profession with a way of explaining the economy without requiring theoretical modelling assumptions that don't reflect reality. I studied economics at Cambridge University several years ago and finally can see an economic theory that more closely reflects the whole story. And for those interested in politics, Eric Beinhocker shows why Left and Right ultimately is not the best theoretical foundation for explaining how to improve things. Complexity theory provides politicians with a framework that starts with cooperation (Left) and competition (Right) co-existing and builds its policies with both present. One final prediction: this book will continue to grow in popularity. The world is complex. This book thoroughly stimulates the mind.
34 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterful explanation of fundamental shift in economics,
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This review is from: The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (Hardcover)
The title THE ORIGIN OF WEALTH sounds like a deliberate mix of the titles of two classical masterpieces: THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (1859) by Charles Darwin and THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (1776) by Adam Smith. Before reading the book, I wondered if this might be just a cheap tric by author Eric Beinhocker to suggest that he has written a successor-masterpiece to these two famous groundbreaking books combining and integrating elements from both? After reading the book I say: no cheap tric. Beinhocker has written an incredible book in which he masterfully explains the paradigm shift that is needed and happening in economic science and practise. The shift in question moves from traditional economics to complexity economics and it draws heavily on evolution theory. Beinhocker not only explains the theoretical shift that is going on but also decribes implications for business and public policy. It is just amazing how Beinhocker is capable of integrating so much research findings and theoretical insights from different disciplines into a coherent theoretical framework. The title of this book could not have been more appropriate and well-deserved.Coert Visser
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How new thinking in economics and business can strengthen each other,
This review is from: The Origin Of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (Paperback)
It is hard to understand why in the beginning of 2008 no economist is able to figure out what to do about the financial chaos starting with the sub-prime disaster. If you have read this book you will underst better why it is a chaos and why nobody has any answers. The economy is a complex system, that is chaotic, and anybody that claims to be able to predict what will happen will only be right by luck.What did I learn from this book? Do not trust anybody that makes a prediction about a complex system. The idea of economic equilibrium in an economic system is absolute nonsense. There is still some hope. Whilst there are no states of equilibrium the changes are not random. It is not total chaos. The economic system like other complex systems has "emergent properties", like periods with wild gyrations and quieter periods. One can hope that with future research one can find out something useful about the causes of these emergent properties, as the basis for policy making. Evolution is also a complex system. Organisms change at random due to genetic mutations. The mutations that survive and win, fit best in the environment. It is not the survival of the fittest, the one that fights the hardest; it is the random mutation that thrives best in the current environment. This contains an important lesson for business, may be even for competing economic systems. In the longer term wealth in business is created by innovation (these are the equivalent of mutations). Most successful companies fail to innovate because they only focus on improving their products, like more performance, lower costs and different style. To succeed in innovation the company must in addition take the risk of investing in many mutations of which most will fail. The book has the great merit of multi-disciplinary thinking. It brings together new thinking in economics, business, evolution and complex systems and shows how these disciplines interact and can strengthen each other.
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