A New Prophecy for a Global America

Industrial prosperity has reached its limit. Stagnation, decline, impoverishment and a general kind of misery mark the end of an era of one model of growth. A great reconfiguration of the global economy is inevitable.

Such are the prophecies of Umair Haque.

Haque does not have a completely doomsday outlook, however. As a blogger for the Harvard Business Review, director of the London-based Havas Media Lab, and a self-described "diehard capitalist," he insists he is a great optimist at heart. "I firmly believe we will get out of this mess," he predicts. His dire assessment of the "flatlining" of human progress under our current economic system is countered by his buoyant call for a "meaningful prosperity." As such, Haque is sending out a warning against anything that smacks of immediate gratification: McMansions, 70-inch plasma televisions, and Jersey Shore frivolity.

He thinks we can do better. But first, he says, we have to rearrange the building blocks of our economic institutions to make them more humanistic: "Institutions, at the end of the day, are just an expression of values. What really has to change is the way in which we value the future, nature, one another, and our own well-being."

Envisioning the future has recently brought on a flood of retrospective musings about core American values and how they might apply—or not—to the expanding global economy of today. Haque poses the question, "How did we get from being that shining city on a hill?" More importantly, how can we get back there? Haque suggests that we need the same type of foresight as the people who settled this country.

"When the Founding Fathers came over here they had a fundamentally different vision of a good life than what was offered to them in England," he says. "It was about everybody having a chance to foster and develop all of that great stuff of life. They were rebelling against an aristocracy that kept people from reaching their potential."

Beneath Haque's witty and satirical blogging about Donald Trump's inanity and the dumbification of the strip mall consumer lies a pervasive sadness over this sense of unrealized potential. Indeed, he laments loss and wastefulness of any kind. And with an MBA from the London School of Business, it is only fair that he turn his sharp critiquing tools on himself.

"In a previous life I was a banker and a trader, but I found that it was congealing my soul faster than it was filling up my bank account," Haque says. "I was miserable, and one day, I just quit."

Through his blog and his recently published book, The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business, Haque attempts to write a new economic order into existence. He is shepherding the transition from a functional economy that provides us with "stuff we don't need" to an aspirational economy that creates pathways to satisfying the intangibles in life—health, wisdom, and maybe even the pursuit of happiness.

"The only point that I ever want to make is that we need to ask bigger questions," he says. "The fundamental error is to presume that the role of the economy is merely to provide us with material plenitude. We've been there and done that and gotten the T-shirt. The question is, What happens after that?"

Haque surmises that the demands of the global economy will show us how to reshape the way we do business. Countries like India and China are already "steaming ahead with very different kinds of economies," and we need to take note, he says: "The good news is that the world is a big place. If America is not capable of making the leap, my guess is that there are countries that are very hungry to make it. In this game of global competition, the stakes are much bigger."

But even the bigger stakes are rooted in the most basic individual choices that we all make, no matter what income scale we inhabit. After all, Haque points out, the economy is just a tool. What we choose to accomplish with that tool will define us. "There has to be more," he insists. "If there isn't, I'm checking out."

Not to worry, though, because Haque says he's already seen "the green shoots of reinvention springing up."

HBR Blog

@umairh