Infinite Ideas

Game of Thrones is full of business strategy – if you know where to look

As our winter draws (reluctantly) to a close we plunge once more into a world where winter is coming, and brings with it sex, intrigue, swordfights, skulduggery and dragons. Unless (or possibly even if) you’ve been living on a wi-fi free desert island for the last five years you will realise we are talking about Game of Thrones, season 6 of which reached our screens this month. The programme makers have been teasing us for several months with what we do and don’t know; what may or may not have happened (yes, we’re talking Jon Snow here). One trailer had Bran declaring that ‘they have no idea what is going to happen’, something that over the years has proven true time and again. We knew the programme was fabulous entertainment right from the start of Season 1 but what we didn’t realise until Ned Stark lost his head was that in this series anything can happen. Bad things will happen to good people, heroes will die, villains will prosper and at no point will we feel this world is safe.

Game of Thrones is possibly the most widely discussed programme on television. With only ten episodes per season it is on our screens for little more than two months out of every year, yet the internet is alive year round with articles on the characters, photographic memes and speculation regarding what’s going to happen next. Why has this programme so inspired us? It has to be in the quality of the storytelling. Compelling characters, a mysterious universe that not even the characters who live in it understand (people thought dragons had died out years ago and nobody believed the white walkers were anything but a myth) and events that frequently extend beyond the protagonists’ control have us perpetually on the edge of our seat. Now, what if we could get people this excited about business?

Business is the dynamic force that shapes our economies and our lives. It’s crucial to the survival of western society as we know it. Business is about progress, wealth creation and opportunity. It should be exciting – fun, even – yet it is frequently discussed and taught in dry and theoretical tomes or through the clumsy medium of presentations reliant on screens of charts and bullet lists. You might not remember every single intricate detail of what happened in the last five seasons of Game of Thrones but we bet you could easily give a rundown of the key highlights. But how much of the last business seminar you attended can you remember? How much of it did you go home and relate to your family or discuss with your friends? How many memes did it generate?

So by bringing the worlds of business and Game of Thrones together we hoped that we could imbue business theory with some of the excitement we feel when we watch the series. Once you take away the dragons and swordfights you start to see more similarities than differences. This strange medieval fantasy kingdom may not look a lot like our world but a lot of its essential ingredients – ambition, deceit, bravery, folly, triumph, disaster – feature in many a news story in the business press. Here are just a few key places where Game of Thrones and business touch.

Nice guys finish last: In the Game of Thrones universe it is not sufficient to be morally right like Ned Stark and his family; one must also be a clever – and lucky – player of the game. The same can be said for business: in this high-stakes world success is not granted simply to those with the best ideas, those who entered the market first or even those who put in the most work. Business, like Game of Thrones, is full of surprises and those who make it to the top do so by not only staying one step ahead of the game but learning to control it rather than having the game play them. Lose focus even momentarily and you lose your advantage. This does not mean you have to be an unprincipled swine to get ahead: the dastardly Petyr Baelish is the exemplary game-player but Daenerys too has demonstrated strategic skill while maintaining a strong moral code.

It’s not what you know but who you know: In Game of Thrones that also includes what you know about them, and how you use it. In business it usually means networking rather than blackmail (though of course that’s not unheard of either). Cersei, Lord Varys and Petyr Baelish all operate networks of people to bring them intelligence on other game players and help them leverage their strategic advantage. So vast is Varys’ network in fact that he is nicknamed the Spider. We all know we need to network more but often only think of it when we need something (a recommendation, a job). But networking is a daily business – Ned Stark left it too late to try to cultivate relationships, staying holed up in Winterfell after the war, and look how well that turned out for him.

You know nothing: Well all right, not nothing, but you rarely have all the information and skills you need to succeed entirely solo. Which is why you need to develop a great team around you. Daenerys has many queenly attributes but she could not have got where she is now without Jorah’s strategic advice, Daario’s muscle, Missandei’s cultural knowledge, or her dragons. A weak spot left unguarded provides an advantage for a rival. Which is why truly successful individuals know themselves well enough to pinpoint their weaknesses and take steps to do something about it.

You win or you die: If you want to succeed you have to be prepared to fail too. But that need not mean taking foolish risks, plunging into the unknown and hoping for the best. Instead you need to follow Baelish’s example and learn how to take calculated risks. Petyr Baelish has been the invisible hand, influencing events, even orchestrating the death of John Arryn, which began the war of the five kings. But at no point has he got those hands truly dirty. He’s always kept at a safe remove from the action – we know he was behind Joffrey’s murder but nobody in the world of the programme could connect him to it. His options are still open and he can pull away from a plan at any time. If you are patient and take incremental, small risks you stand a much better chance of achieving your goals than if, like Renly, Robb or Viserys you insist on going in all guns blazing.

Once you start seeing similarities between Game of Thrones and business it is hard to stop. Next time you have to give a business seminar why not throw in a few examples – it’s almost certain to get you more notice than yet another pie chart, spreadsheet or bullet list.

Engineering and process management are sectors that are dominated by a male workforce. It’s a man’s world. They’ve grown up constructing meccano, building things and then destroying them as boys are taught to do. It’s cutthroat and competitive and yet Susannah Clarke, co-author of Implementing ISO 9001:2015: Thrill your customers and transform your cost base with the new gold standard for business management has over 30 years’ experience in this world. As the current managing partner of Process Management International (PMI). Susannah promotes quality management, writes articles, speaks at conferences and outsources her consultancy to improve quality management and processes.

In between promoting her book and working at PMI, Susannah kindly answered some of our questions about what it’s like to work in such a male-dominated sector.

What is it about engineering and process management that appeals to you? My father is an architect, so I guess the root of it all comes from that. I was amazed by the need to be precise, which at first seemed tedious as a child, but then watching the result, seeing something innovative and creative be built, from those thousands of small details I found quite inspiring. Having said that, in my business life I haven’t always been a fan of process. I struggled to see the link into the service world in which I was working, and in the early days made that common mistake of imagining that process made work restrictive, boring and repetitive.

However as my business grew, and more people had similar jobs to perform, I soon realised that without process, mistakes were made which resulted in unhappy customers and employees spending time on fixing the mistakes as opposed to delivering what the customer wanted. So we started to change that and worked on creating robust processes for the work that was being done and as a result found ourselves able to go to customers and make suggestions, show them how we could do things better, faster and right first time and not only did that make the customer happy, it meant they gave us more work! That appealed to me, naturally and it also appealed to the people working with me because they could think about the art of the possible and not be limited by the amount of ‘fire-fighting’ and problem solving they had to do.

Have you ever come across people who weren’t willing to be directed by a woman? To be honest no, I haven’t. That’s not to say I haven’t dealt with some difficult people, but inevitably there is more to the problem. I’ve always worked hard to sit down with people, customers and staff, to find out what’s going on, what bothers them and what I can do to help the situation. At PMI (Process Management International) we call it ‘Giving people a good listening to!’ My experience has been that when people really believe you care, when you’re not just paying lip service to their complaint, then they start to work with you and become a returning client. After that, it doesn’t matter whether you are a man or woman they are happy to work with you because they trust you.

There are many women working as business consultants. What made you switch from large companies like NatWest and GSK to the world of engineering and process management?

When I left NatWest I became self-employed and started my own business as a trainer. I’ll be honest, at that time I was very against working for a large company, having gone through Black Monday in the City and seen the departure of many members of staff.  So I was very happy to be working as my own boss. My opportunities grew and I had to start sub-contracting work to other trainers in order to service all the customers and then eventually I merged my business with another very similar size business that was also run by a female owner-founder and created a new consultancy, Prelude.

The aim wasn’t to avoid large companies, it was to have the freedom to shape our own company and community – to work with a group of like-minded people who wanted to do the best job for a customer. We could be nimble and adapt to our environment to offer new services. It was during this time that process management became important to us in order to service new and existing customers and continue to grow. We were also flexible in our hiring policy and had several women who were employed part time doing fantastic jobs, helping them through their maternity leave and return to work as it suited them. As a consequence these employees were incredibly loyal to us.

Around 2004/2005 one of my clients asked us to take on managing a service for training administration for a large process improvement/lean six sigma programme they were rolling out with a company called PMI (Process Management International). That was the first time I had worked with the company and I was impressed by how they were organised and the processes they had in place to manage the training. We continued to work together and develop the opportunities beyond that original client. In 2007 I had sold the business and completed my earn out and PMI offered me some consultancy work with them. They also offered me the chance to go on a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt course, which almost blew my mind! I learnt so much in such a short space of time and had so many ‘ah ha’ moments. After that there was no going back.

I’m not saying I don’t get carried away and sometimes forget those principles, but I’m lucky enough now to work with some brilliant consultants who have many years of experience in this field and they are masters at catching me before I shoot off in the wrong direction.

I still think of myself as someone who works with large companies. I just don’t work for them!

How have things changed in the past 30 years for women operating in the manufacturing industries? And what advice would you give to young women entering the world of engineering and process management? (Or business in general?) We still have a dearth of women in manufacturing and engineering. Read any of the studies on these sectors and they indicate that around one third of the manufacturing workforce and only around 15 to 20% of the engineering workforce is female. Research attributes this to gender pay inequity, work-life balance, insufficient women at the senior executive level and so on, but realistically women only become really aware of these challenges once we have entered industry, don’t we? So isn’t the question more about how do we make a career in these sectors more attractive to women?

Fundamentally I believe we need to start early with the right education in schools and the elimination of stereotypes. When I was 16 I went to a boys grammar school. There were only eight girls in my year, so the school didn’t cater for ‘girl’ subjects. I studied woodwork, graphics and metalwork along with the boys, all the girls did, and I rowed in a coxed four because there weren’t enough of us to make a girl’s team for netball or hockey. I think this helped to break down traditional stereotypes for me. The other thing I found was that from age 11 onwards the boys had specific lesson time allocated to debate current affairs. They had been taught and encouraged to create cohesive, constructive arguments as part of their education.  They were preparing the boys from an early age to have a view, be able to express it and learn how to prepare for such discussions.  I know we do more of that in our schools today, certainly my daughters are proficient at creating a strong argument! But I still put my head in my hands when I look at the Design & Technology options available to them and their female bias.

What advice would I give them?

There are no limits except those you impose upon yourself. That’s the best advice I could give a woman.

Understand Systems Thinking, regardless of which sector you work in, whether it is service or manufacturing. Get to know W. Edwards Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, Systems Thinking, Theory of Knowledge, Variation and Psychology. The four elements are essential to your own and your organisation’s success. Once you understand these and have a decent personal kit bag of tools and methods you can call upon in the different situations or challenges you find yourself, you will be amazed at how good you feel about what you are doing and what you can achieve.

Be naturally curious rather than jumping to solutions. The more you can ask about what’s going on, using great open questions which avoid making others feel defensive, the more people will open up to you and involve you so that you can learn about the current situation and contribute towards what improvements may be possible in the future.

What have you found the most challenging aspects of working in this field? There’s so much to learn! But that’s good because I really enjoy learning. However it’s important to remember when to ask for help from others with more knowledge and experience. Influencing others to trust the methods comes a close second. People get into their own habits. They have always done things their way or the way they were told, so persuading them to suspend judgement, try new approaches, change their thinking, is naturally sometimes hard work.

What is the most rewarding part of your job? There is nothing quite like working with either an individual or team who are struggling and gradually seeing their lights come on as they start to realise what options are open to them, that there are some theories they can have a go at.

There is also something about people realising that they don’t always have to be right first time. I’m not suggesting that people should go off and make huge changes without considering the consequences of course.  But helping people realise that they can consciously try small changes, test out a theory or two, see what results they get, learn from the results and then adopt (do it), adapt (change it) or abandon (discard it completely), is very liberating for them. People can get obsessed with things being either right or wrong. I don’t think that’s helpful. I think that prevents people trying new ideas, so giving them an environment, a method, which enables them to make mistakes in a controlled way is amazingly rewarding because they become so enthusiastic about what’s possible by working that way.

It's Super Thursday in the publishing world, which is a bit like Christmas morning for us. We're off to the bookshops after work to see all the beautiful, colourful covers adorning the tables like waking up and seeing what Santa has brought us. Naturally we already have bookshelves at home heaving with unread tomes and we look forward to adding to the large stacks that we may take to the beach next year. What can we say, we like choice.

Infinite Ideas does not have a book released this year, however we do have a super exciting Christmas list. There really is something for everyone from business stocking-fillers, to leadership lessons for the business aficionado in the family. However, the title that we are most excited about is all about Christmas or, more precisely, Yule. Catherine Cooper's new book, The Wichen Tree, will be published at the end of November and is another very exciting Jack Brenin adventure.

Jack, having grown up in Greece, has never seen snow so this Yule is especially exciting for him as well as coming across many magical creatures and places in the lead up to Christmas.

If you're new to this series, the first book, The Golden Acorn, is available for free on Kindle. There's just enough time for you to dive into this magical series before the fifth book comes out. We're nice like that, we thought we'd give you a bit of extra time to get hooked on the series! If you're already a fan, then there's still time to put it on your Christmas list and mark it on your calendar as there are just over six weeks until you can get your hands on this great book.

How to win the Great British Bake Off 

As rain hits Britain today and the leaves suicidally fall to the ground, it signifies the end of summer and the final of the Great British Bake Off. We’ve been hooked in the office this year, as I’m sure everyone around the country is waiting with baited breath for the final at eight this evening (that is, unless the world hasn’t ended before then).

The three finalists, Nadiya, Tamal and Ian have fought off stiff competition to get to the final and we’ve come up with some career lessons that you can learn from these excellent bakers:

NadiyaWe’re not going to lie, Nadiya is our favourite contestant, perhaps in the history of bake off. We didn’t think we could find a funnier contestant than Norman but Nadiya has surpassed his wit and she is a much better baker. Nadiya has been star baker three times so far (tied with Ian) so she is in a strong position going into the final. However, her journey there has not been easy. In the beginning, Nadiya struggled with the technical challenges, often coming last or near the bottom. When faced with unknown situations, it can throw us off guard. When we’re out of our comfort zone, having to work with new clients, or having to clear up someone else’s (or your own) blunders, it can be hard to stay cool and get a suitable outcome for your business.

Nadiya has, at times, been anything but cool under pressure (the paperclip and soufflé incident from last week, for example) and she has a tendency not to believe that she is capable. However, Nadiya’s creativity and willingness to take risks has got her to the final. As with any strong leader, capability is everything. You can only fake it for so long and, trust us, your employees will know if you are ineffective when it comes to making tough decisions or coping under pressure.

IanIan, like Nadiya, is going into this final with three star baker titles to his name. He is competent and able to cope under even the toughest of pressures (and he was the first to receive the Mary Berry wink this season!) However, Ian’s stars were all awarded towards the beginning of the series, he peaked too early it would seem. Either that or his competitors were able to improve quickly. There are also rumours that he has been getting specialist training from a professional chef to up his game (we are not endorsing these rumours, nor are we endorsing Ian to be honest). When you’re competing with your colleagues or other businesses, it is important not to burn out too quickly, or to put all your cards on the table. Ian’s arrogance is also something that could cost him the title.

One of the great things about Bake Off is the camaraderie between the contestants (well, except for bin-gate, but we won’t open that can of worms) and yet Ian seems to have remained a lone ranger in the tent. Perhaps his strategy is to keep his skills to himself, or to remain apart so that he can focus on making his bakes better than anyone else’s. However, when you’re in the ruthless world of business, sometimes buttering up (pun intended) the competition can be beneficial for both parties. Finding a way that both companies can work together and sharing knowledge is not always a bad thing. Though Ian’s chocolate well was a bit, well, anticlimactic, one can’t deny that Ian has great initiative and the ability to make his own cake moulds. Seeing the problem from another angle can be great when leading a team and knowing your strengths when times are tough can help get you out of a jam.

TamalTamal is our favourite anaesthetist and our second favourite finalist of this year’s Bake Off. Tamal has been the luck recipient of the Hollywood Handshake (not quite an Oscar!) and is adept at his baking skills. However, Tamal’s weakness is timing. When you’re up against the wall with a particular project, time management is everything. Being a successful leader is about how you manage your employees and delegate to make things work as efficiently as possible.

Tamal is this year’s unlikely heartthrob (we wouldn’t say no to one of his vol-au-vents) and has taken it all in his stride. In business, like with everything, there will be peaks and troughs in your success. Tamal never let his successes or disasters go to his head, and he certainly isn’t signing up to be the latest Cosmo centrefold. Being able to juggle his high-pressured job with baking every week and still coming out on top is a skill that we can all learn. Sometimes, though, it’s best to keep things simple.

Some of the other contestants fell by the wayside each week, one person had to leave the tent. Though we really liked Flora, it was clear that time and again, she didn’t listen to Mary and Paul’s advice and gave herself too much to do. Superiors give advice and try to guide you in the right direction. Having too much on your plate can be catastrophic for your career and your personal life if not balanced well. Dorret was eliminated in week three after she had scraped through the first two weeks. She was the recipient of the Mary Berry scowl when she confessed one week that she had bought her cookie cutter and the next week that she hadn’t even practiced her bake. Not preparing for things is, essentially preparing to fail. Showing up is only half the battle, when presenting, working in a team or just working on a project, being prepared is key to survival in the cut throat world of business.

When you’re next buying wine, consider Austria

When you think about Austrian alcohol, you’re probably more familiar with beers and Oktoberfest thanks to the Bavarian influence and how fond they are of a good pint. It’s true, when I was backpacking around Europe, I never thought to order an Austrian glass of wine, rather it was straight for the home brew.

You’re most likely more familiar with the terroirs of France, Australia, New Zealand, even Spain, but most likely not Austria. Yet did you know that Austrian wine has a history dating back to the Habsburgs? Yes, that’s right, while all that furore over land and such was being fought over, it is likely that the winners would sit down with a nice glass of dry white from their own vineyards.

So consider this, the next time you’re throwing a dinner party, why not spend that little bit extra on a bottle of Austrian wine. More than anything it will make you look like a true wine connoisseur instead of going for your usual bottle that everyone’s had before. It will be a great starting point for conversation about wines, travel and the great food that you are more than likely to serve to your guests.

If you’re wondering what to serve it with, perhaps some excellent hearty Austrian food such as goulash, schnitzel or, if you’re really brave, offal. Though we suggest that, unless you are actually Austrian, springing offal on your guests is a risky move so perhaps save that for next time or offer them an alternative in case the offal is not to their liking. Surprisingly, Austrian wine goes well with Mediterranean cuisine so, if you’re a vegetarian, perhaps you could cook something much lighter than a hog roast. More information on what goes with Austrian wine can be found here.

Our book, The wines of Austria by Stephen Brook will be published on 19 October. If you can’t wait until then, we have some advice about how to introduce your palette to new wines from our book, Secrets of wine by Giles Kime:

Even on the first leg of the path to vinous nirvana, it is important to expose your palate to other styles of wine without letting them cloud your understanding. There are a huge number of wines that no one except a few hardened wine buffs is aware of. Plenty of wines are made purely for local consumption, such as Austria Gruner Veltliner, Swiss Chasselas, Italian Aglianico, Uruguayan Tannat and Canadian Ice Wine. Though initially you should keep these wines at arm’s length, they will eventually be essential for pushing your taste buds to the extremes – just as the best fitness training programme will exercise muscles that you don’t normally use. The chances are that you won’t like them. But even if you don’t they will offer flavours and aromas that your palate and nose wouldn’t otherwise be subjected to. They will stretch your senses to the extremes of their experience.

Was Steve Jobs a conscious capitalist?

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months, then you may have heard about a new film coming out this Christmas about the late Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, entitled, Steve Jobs. With the star Michael Fassbender already tipped for Oscar success, the film has been plagued with scandal since before it was even put into production. Though Fassbender may have done a good job, after the Sony hack, it was revealed that writer Aaron Sorkin didn’t even know who he was. How opinions can change.

Two trailers have been released so far for the film and, if they’re anything to go by, it doesn’t look like Jobs was the type of person you’d want to invite round for a cup of tea. So focused on his job was he, that he neglected his daughter in pursuit of building up his company into an empire. That he did. There are Apple products all around you, all you have to do is step out of your door and you’ll see someone on an iPhone, chatting, texting or instagramming their lives. Apple is more than a technology company, it is a lifestyle for millions of people. Every time a new model of iPhone is released, there are people who are selling their grandmother to be the first in line to get their hands on the new model. We all remember that rather odd woman who had queued in New York for a new iPhone, just because she thought she should, and had no idea why she really wanted it. Apple has saturated the market so much that, though Microsoft and Bill Gates’ empire is still incredibly successful, even those who own a PC are aware of how good Apple is. To collect them all, as Pokemon fans would say, is to shell out thousands of pounds, and then more to update your collection. When does it end? And should I be ashamed of my 2009 iPod nano that is hiding in a drawer at my parents’ house?

That iconic combination of jeans and polo neck has cemented Jobs as an easily-recognisable figure and the face of Apple. There’s no doubt that Jobs achieved extraordinary things with Apple, but is the company promoting conscious capitalism? Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars, authors of Nine visions of capitalism, suggest that Jobs and the Apple corporation were winners with their very first product:

The computers produced by Acorn and the BBC Micro ‘failed’ to match the appeal of the Apple I. In reality there were a number of contributing factors: the USA has a much larger and more demanding market; California legislators approved a free Apple for every public school, provided that school purchased a second; a new mass market was created that shut imports out; and Apple was pitched in terms of personal liberation from IBM, the rebellion of a defiant citizenry against a corporatist ethos.

So Apple asserted that it was a cool company from the start. We all remember those really fun Apple Macs that were brightly coloured, they were not designed to appeal to Wall Street stockists, they were for the young, hip students and start-ups. They epitomise the rise of Silicon Valley: exciting, fresh and completely different to the stuffy companies that make you work ridiculous hours and resent your job. Yet Apple too makes you work ridiculous hours, by providing free food, gyms and making the office a welcoming environment, employees don’t want to go home. Essentially, they are in it for life (or at least as long as they work there). The opportunity for Netflix and chill is sadly lacking. Last October, Apple HR demonstrated it’s conscious capitalism by unveiling its philanthropy programme, and it would match any donation to causes that its employees made.

In an age where most all of us in the Western world own a laptop, smart phone and most likely an Apply product or two, these companies are literally part of millions of people’s lives. Capitalism affects us on a global scale and Apple’s stocks just keep growing. New technologies are being developed and to stay current, you have to stay ahead of the competition. But to appeal to the masses and to remain in our pockets, you have to be conscious of what the consumer wants. Earlier in the year, when Taylor Swift called Apple out on their policy of not paying artists for the first three months of Apple Music, Apple responded, ‘we hear you, Taylor Swift’ in an attempt to appeal human, they came out smelling of roses when they could easily have ran into a PR blunder. By looking like they care about what Swift and other artists had to say, they showed their conscious capitalist ethics.

By Charles Hampden-Turner, co-author of Nine visions of capitalism.

The City and Wall Street head the world in mergers, acquisitions and take-overs. The conventional wisdom is that if Company A has more money than Company Z then it should be allowed to take it over. This will help us all since the more successful companies are taking control of the less successful, the very rich are acquiring those of lesser means and therefore the whole economy improves. If you can convince shareholders that they can earn more when Company A takes over Company Z then this will put the target company under better management than before. Those with the most cash to spare are better by definition.

But is this so? Affluent economies are expensive places to make goods and services. Nearly all standard products are cheaper to produce elsewhere. The major exceptions to this rule are innovative products and services. If your product is original you have no competitors for several months or more and can charge for it what the market is prepared to pay. We in the West must innovate or die. There are signs that we are meeting this challenge to some extent but the question arises as to whether large companies that like to acquire others are as innovative as the companies they are gobbling up. The evidence is that most innovation comes from start-ups and relatively small companies. These are not only many times more creative but have much better labour relations, evoke more loyalty, spend more on training their people, think longer term, have better more trusting relationships and serve their customers and communities better. Gallup has found again and again that most citizens like small companies and trust them whereas up to 80% dislike large companies and distrust them. With size there comes bureaucracy, formality, rigidity and pre-programmed behaviour. To have these larger companies gobble up the small may be of very doubtful benefit to these smaller companies, to our economy and to our society.

In any event how can you ‘buy’, ‘own’ or ‘take over’ someone else’s genius? Hewlett Packard bought Autonomy for $1.7 billion, 79% above its market price and had to write down its value by $8.8 billion only months later. This is presently under furious litigation with accusations of deliberate misinformation filling press reports. We know nothing of these details and take sides with neither litigant. We would point out however that the value of information within the heads of genius founders is very difficult to know, hard to value properly and almost impossible to ‘acquire’. In the absence of a good and close relationship with that genius the value of intellectual property will melt away. The 79% premium over market price depended on the sharing of future strategies. How much s/he shares with you is largely optional and you may gain or lose you billions. You can legally mandate that the founder stays in your company for X years but not what will happenduring that interval. In any case having received much of your money the genius cannot wait to found another start-up with the money made. Why benefit someone who claims to ‘own you’ and demands that you report to her/him on a regular basis?

Hostile takeovers are especially tricky. You can acquire the real estate, the inventory, the machinery, products in the pipeline, even signed contracts but what the company had in mind for the future could be its most valuable asset and in the face of hostility you may never learn it. You have the bits and pieces but not the values which held these together and gave the company direction. Apparently 79% of the value of Autonomy lay in its future and HP could not afford to fall out with those envisioning that future. Of course there is good reason why large companies are risk-shy. They have mountains of money to lose and any gains would be fractions of that mountain, while start-ups have almost nothing to lose but have bright horizons to explore. The shareholders in large corporations have little appetite for risk. Their pensions are at stake, while the ‘friends, families and fools’ rallying round the founder of a new company relish the wild ride and hope to found a dynasty.

There is also the question of time. A small, privately owned company is thinking how to support the children and grandchildren of its owning family. This is a time-horizon of twenty to forty years. An investment made now could greatly assist your grandchildren. In contrast shareholders in a publicly owned corporation now retain their shares for an average of six to eleven months. They are less investors than traders and will trade on the basis of the latest quarterly report. To reduce risk they have tiny fractions of their portfolios in any one company, care little about that company and may not even know that they ‘owned’ it for a few months last year! It follows that having a private company acquired by a public one might actually harm the economy and greatly shorten its view of the future.

Nearly all investments that aim to grow a company take many years to pay back. R&D, executive development, increased quality, new plant and equipment may justify themselves ten to twenty years hence. In contrast selling your HQ building and leasing it back, buying your own shares so that the price jumps, laying off researchers and cutting the training budget will all produce more money for shareholders this quarterand the longer term damage will not be manifest for a few years, that is after the present CEO retires. His pension may be tied to profits! The company has become a machine for maximizing shareholders’ take and resources are transferred from those who do the actual work to those who collect rents.

Companies who are on an acquisition spree either accumulate a cash mountain so that they can pounce swiftly or they borrow extensively so that their acquisition is heavily in debt. Both tactics may be detrimental the target company and to the economy. The cash mountain is not being re-invested and the debt burdens and even cripples an acquired company which must now concentrate on repayment, not innovation. The truth is that investing in R&D and in the training of your own employees makes you vulnerable to being taken-over. The raider says to your shareholders, ‘would you not like the money being spent on employees in your own pockets now?’ The answer is often ‘yes’ and since those to whom this offer is made include the most senior people in the target company who typically have share options, they have personal reasons for selling out their company!  No wonder that Professor Colin Mayer studying take-overs in the UK, especially that of Cadbury by Kraft, found that most of these acquired companies were well managed. It was precisely this which made them vulnerable. They were spending on the future and not today.

Published today:  Nine visions of capitalism by Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars

Capitalism in crisis: top culture management gurus map the route to a fairer global economy

Capitalism has been in a state of crisis for nearly a hundred years. The effects of the stock market crash of 1929 were felt well into the 1950s. The turbulence in international currency markets in the late 1960s, which sparked worldwide street protests in 1968, was unresolved until the mid-1980s. And the avalanche of financial crises that followed the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 is still falling on businesses, consumers and communities around the world. In the face of such evidence it would be easy to think that capitalism is a doomed system.

However in Nine visions of capitalism: unlocking the meanings of wealth creation authors Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars suggest otherwise. Capitalism does have a future, they say, but only if the standard Anglo-American model of capitalism is radically transformed. As the authors point out, creating wealth is much more than simply making money. They say, “A community is only better off when it creates wealth through the transformation of money into products and services and the transformation of these back into money via revenue received.” The current model of capitalism has led to a situation where the net worth of the world’s top 10 billionaires stands at over $500 billion, enough to end world poverty instantly twice over. But the global economy is not richer for the presence of billionaires if the money in their pockets has simply been transferred from those of other people.

So how can this failing model be fixed? Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars argue that accommodating diversity is a pre-requisite for the reinvention of wealth creation. China’s spectacular growth, the dynamism and flexibility of the Mittelstand of German-speaking economies, Singapore’s hybridization of East and West, the world’s vibrant immigrant communities and the drive for renewable energy offer different aspects of an authoritative and challenging blueprint for the  future of capitalism. Finally, the authors draw on examples of innovation in capitalism such as the Conscious Capitalism movement in the US, the Cambridge Phenomenon in the UK and the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, which has members from Mongolia to Patagonia as well as the US and UK, to demonstrate what can be done to reinvigorate tired models, and provide a realistic, practical and powerful transformation agenda for the global economy.

By Charles Hampden-Turner, co-author of Nine visions of capitalism.

Unhappy is the economy which cannot distinguish the making of money from the creation of wealth for these are not the same. While creating wealth includes the making of money, the latter is a more narrow activity which can and does in many cases exclude the creation of wealth. Indeed it may even destroy wealth on an epic scale as occurred in 2008. This happens when money is made by taking it away from other people and/or appropriating this from Nature’s bounty. Profits can be made by plundering other people and the planet. So what is the crucial distinction?

The distinction we must bear in mind and was pointed out in the nineteen eighties by Lester Thurow and more recently by Gideon Rachman, is between the zero-sum game or system of competing and the positive-sum systems of wealth creation. In a zero-sum world all gains come from other people or at the expense of the environment. All resources are finite or scarce as economists still teach us, so that what one person gets another must forgo. Alternative value can be extracted from Nature’s bounty, leaving the rest of us poorer for this. Inequality escalates and as the song of the ‘roaring twenties’ put it, “The rich get rich and the poor get poorer, in the meantime, in between time, ain’t we go fun!” Making money by exploiting others creates no wealth. The others are soon too poor to buy very much. Pay-day loans were almost certainly wealth destroying as is loan-sharking in general.

So-called casino capitalism is very much a zero-sum game. Roughly half of all financial advisers are going to score below the Dow Jones average. This is not because they are stupid. Were they twice as clever this would still be their fate, since the average is the zero-sum of all their efforts which cancel each other out. Indeed there is a small overall loss since those running the casino need to be paid.

What then is a positive-sum game? This is where relationships between people generate more wealth than they began with. There is a surplus over and above the cost of what they generated which the parties share. The better wages and the higher share price put money into people’s pockets which they spend anew. Also the value delivered by the supplier may be hugely increased by the use to which the customer puts it. Both live in a world of abundance and this moulds their characters. We will cite examples of each.

In the case of Josiah Wedgewood, the world’s first tycoon, he took loads of red Staffordshire mud and with the help of pottery skills, new instruments he had designed, heat, paint and glaze he made a Portland Vase, Jasperware and other pots. Even in the currency of the times these were at least one hundred times more valuable than their ingredients and graced the royal tables of Europe. His medallion of a kneeling slave in chains culminated in the abolition of the slave trade after his death and it well symbolizes the two faces of capitalism in the distinctions which follow.

Or consider a more modern example. For a decade or more there have been more microchips than people in the world. It must be at least two or three times by now.  A chip installed in your automobile can inflate an airbag before your child’s head can hit your windscreen in a crash. It can unlock doors so you can escape or rescuers can reach you and it sends out signals of your plight. In such cases it saves lives, reduces insurance premiums and enriches all concerned. Yet bits of metal and silicon sand cost next to nothing. You have put human intelligence and purpose into the chip and this comprises its value. Intelligent design followed by intelligent manufacture saves what is most precious to us, the lives we hold dear plus our own. As East Asians like to say, microchips are “the rice of industry”. They feed other businesses and give thousands of products meaning and direction.

This leads us to consider business-to-business wealth creation where the supply of one device allows a second task to be accomplished. Suppose we make number-controlled cardigan knitting machines. Once installed, these knit 2,000 cardigans in one day with sizes altered in seconds. The supplier creates wealth by the method already described. The whole machine is of far more value than its components, but his customer creates wealth by way of the machine functioning. Indeed the machine by itself is valueless. But the garments created at an attractive price make both money and wealth. Supplier and customer have engendered wealth between them, despite their different aims and purposes. In a further example, Rolls Royce aero-engines produce power-by-the-hour to convey people to far destinations. Wealth lies in what they do, not in the engine itself. Contracts even specify this.

We are now in a position to contrast Zero-sum money making with Positive-sum wealth creation.

Zero-sum money makingPositive-sum wealth creation

Money is made by

direct

manipulation of the individual for his exclusive purposes. This money derives from other peopleMoney is made

indirectly

by first benefitting a customer who then reciprocates by bestowing more money upon you.

We are getting ever more individualist, so much so that relying on the favour of other people is deemed unreliable. To be totally independent you need you need to outsmart them by taking their money. “Never give a sucker an even break” is our watch-word and we need “to make a quick buck” which is not possible when you rely on another’s gratitude. The real individualist acts unilaterally whether people like it or not. Our wits entitle us to this.

In contrast all genuine wealth creation inheres within relationships, so that the Chinese word for “rich” is “well connected” and guanxi or relationship is their chief business value. The whole must be more than its parts and design and manufacturing are all-important to being productive. Between us we create more than we started with and trust is vital. A research group at MIT studied what motivated 800 creators of open-source software and make this available to all. The originators said it was a gift by them to the online community and they were repaid in many ways. Such action triggers the productive efforts of others on a wide scale.

Making money is via

transactions

in which one person receives money from another and gets goods or services back. The parties compete to get more from others at the least expense to themselvesWealth is created by

transformation

of money into goods and services & their transformation back to money when sales are made. This is the source of the surplus value generated

If the above statements are correct then we need to ask whether banks and financial institutions create wealth at all. They would appear to be sterile by dealing exclusively in money or “financial products” as they like to call them, but there is no transformation and no wealth creation. No two coins or notes cohabiting ever produced a third coin or ever will. So long as we stay with money there is endemic scarcity as economists teach, not the abundance of related brain cells and their associated meanings. Whatever trades’ unions receive shareholders and managers must forgo and the strategy of the latter is to pay as little as possible to remain competitive on costs. Taking money and creating a product and/or service from this is a transformation from currency to valued things and services and then back to money revenues when the sale is made. It is these conversions or metamorphoses from one state to another that generate wealth.

On the other hand we need banks to advance loans to industry so there is little doubt that they facilitate wealth creation by the real economy. What this means is that banks create no wealth on their own but make it possible for industry effect transformations. In short the role of banks is to serve industry and not principally themselves. Bets made in the world casino are zero-sum, with some of the big boys able to skew the markets in their favour by the sheer size of their wager and by using their clients’ money.

Banks do “make money” in one sense. They leverage funds and lend out as much as twenty to thirty times what they hold in assets. This conjuring trick should not be confused with genuine wealth creation, because where asset prices collapse leverage goes into reverse and banks LOSE twenty to thirty times as much. This is how trillions disappeared in 2008, an error for which we have been paying ever since. Banks need asset prices to hold up and only genuine wealth creation can do this. They create derivatives from these assets and then derivatives from those derivatives in a veritable house of cards. But unless they serve industry better these foundations will remain unstable, as were their subprime mortgages and their liars’ loans.

By

distributing

money to worthy persons and institutions banks aim to make the most profit with the least possible risk plus the highest level of collateral. Banks are simply one more industry and should compete with best of themThe receivers of the banks’ money are the real

contributors

and wealth creators, whose products are risky, uncertain and hard to assess, so banks avoid them. Banks are NOT simply one more industry and competing with customers hurts all.

One reason bankers pay themselves so much is that vast sums pass through their hands for which they are responsible. Surely that deserves compensation? But the real reason they pay themselves so much is that they can. As distributors, the money reaches them first and what they skim off is up to their own discretion. Of course, industries will then lack funds with what amounts to a private tax levied across the board. Less money reaches the genuine contributors. Banks are not just another industry but a means of distributing money to industry and the tricks they use have abused this powerful position

But even these diminished amounts go to the wrong people. Catering to the already wealthy is a highly conservative process. They have much to lose and too little to gain. But even worse is funnelling money to the housing market. This is low risk, high collateral because most people pay off their mortgages and houses can be repossessed if interest is not paid. But it is also very low productivity. The house holder sits tight among his/her own possessions and waits for the property to increase in value. It often beats working! Two groups of American economists examining international comparisons have shown that faster expansion of the financial sectors triggers slower growth in the real economies. Talent and resources are attracted away from contributors towards distributors. The success of the City may be a doubtful blessing. UK industry has been in steady decline for more than 150 years. Manufacturing is down to 10% of the economy and productivity is faltering, not enough of the money is reaching the genuine contributors.                                    

Conclusion

Capitalism has changed the way we shop, there is no denying it. Where once a high street would be populated with a butcher’s and a baker’s (perhaps too a candle-stick maker?) we now have colossal supermarkets offering everything we need under one roof and for seemingly a better deal than the smaller shops. Capitalism should strike a balance between big companies and smaller ones. Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars’ book Nine visions of capitalism offers some ways in which conscious capitalism, and in turn conscious consumerism can benefit those who really do live on the other side of the world.

It’s true that consumers are coin-operated and you’d be hard-pressed to find many people who would reject a good deal. If you can get the same product at a cheaper rate from a bigger company, then why would you spend the extra money? How much power do consumers really have over capitalist giants such as Amazon, Google and Starbucks? Well quite a lot, it would seem. Sure, one person would have a mighty job trying to bring down a huge company on their own, but in the social media age, where everyone’s a critic, word of mouth and customer service means more to giant companies than you think. Amazon describes itself as the most ‘customer-centric’ company, offering every product you could wish for from the supermarket in the sky. The recent Amazon Prime day, which had more deals then the Generation Game, was brilliant in that it got thousands of people to sign up to the service for the ’30 day free trial’ but then relies on the apathy of the customers not to bother cancelling their subscription. Brilliant. Customers think they’re getting the best deals and Amazon are set to make a huge amount of revenue.

But is cheaper always better? We recently blogged about whether Amazon Prime Day was good for publishers and we understand the value of a good brand. When you see a Starbucks or McDonald’s while backpacking in Timbuktu, there’s a sense of the known and familiar, a comforting feeling that you’re not so far from home and you associate those brands with the everyday. You can be on the other side of the world from your home but there will always be a capitalist giant to remind you that the world is smaller than you think. This logic of the familiarity is easy to transfer to the everyday life. With a Starbucks coffee, you know what you’re going to get. You know that Coca-Cola will taste the same in Austria as it does in Australia and perhaps it is the fear of the unknown that drives consumers to these brands.

However, consider for a moment that you don’t get your morning coffee from Starbucks, but instead from the independent coffee house around the corner. You’re more often than not likely to get better-quality coffee and better customer service. That is not to say that is the way for all independent coffee houses, but if you’re going to compete with giants such as Costa and Starbucks, you’ve got to care about your customers and care about your product. Otherwise, what’s the point? Customer service is valued now more than ever. If you want a book recommendation, Amazon can tell you what other customers who viewed certain items bought, but if you go into a book shop, you can ask for personal recommendations. Booksellers are usually incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to their products, in a way that cannot be substituted by an Amazon algorithm.

Is Amazon Prime day good for publishers?

Today, to mark the 20th anniversary of a small company that you might have heard of called, Amazon, the web retailer is launching its first ever Amazon Prime Day, exclusive offers to customers who have signed up to the £79 a year service which allows for free delivery on items and access to their TV streaming service. It all sounds like a pretty sweet deal from Amazon who claim to be the ‘customer-centric company’.

But what does this all mean for the publishing industry? Well, good news for you is that you can get free ebooks and highly discounted books today. Amazon are pushing the products at customers at prices that are incredibly attractive. But if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is. Take, for example, the summer read that everyone’s talking about, The Girl on the Train, which is selling on Amazon for £6, less than half of the RRP (£12.99). The Amazon price is much less than the average paperback book in your local Waterstones, and no doubt when it is released in paperback, Amazon will reduce it further. How are Amazon making money on this product, and more importantly, how are the publishers?

Well, they probably aren’t. Amazon, that is. By heavily discounting books like this one and Go Set a Watchman, Amazon are creating loss-leaders that are drawing customers to the site in the hope that they will buy more products that aren’t so heavily discounted. Ever wonder why books are so expensive? (the average price for a non-discounted paperback is around £8.99) The simple reason is that bookshops and other sales channels and in particular publishers cannot compete with Amazon’s super selling. For Amazon to sell a book at such a low rate, it must be priced high to ensure that the customer feels like they are getting a significant discount, but also so that the publisher is getting a good enough return on the product to stay in business. Anew app has launched to combat the huge portion of market share that Amazon has, where you can compare their prices to those in your local bookshop and how far away it is.

Sure, not everything on Amazon is super cheap, but the company has no qualms about devaluing books and content. A book costs money to print, many months and sometimes years have been invested in creating this product by the author and publishing company to ensure that it is the best it can be, only to be marked down to 50% off on the first day of publication. We now expect these discounts, and as a publisher, I have been told too many times to count by customers that ‘it’s cheaper to buy it on Amazon’. Yes, this is true, and as a small independent publisher, we cannot compete with such a giant. But we value content and we value authors and the time that it has taken us collectively to bring you the best books that we can produce. Perhaps you think that paying £9.99 for a paperback is excessive, but consider those behind the scenes before you rush to see how much Amazon has knocked off.

Wimbledon semi finals: the Thrashing Serb cocktail

It’s an exciting day at Wimbledon with two stellar matches to watch. Though we sadly don’t have tickets to the grounds, we can share in the spirit both tennis and alcohol related. Of course, the best thing to drink at Wimbledon is Pimms, in true British style but because we’re not there and to celebrate the other European players, we’ve come up with some fun and ‘alternative’ cocktails.

The Thrashing Serb Semi-final Match One: Djokovic vs. Gasquet

OK so we may have given this cocktail a bit of a Wimbledon-themed name (it’s actually called a Summit) but we thought that it sounded refreshingly tennis-y and incorporated the all-important cognac, popular in both Serbia and France. To make your Thrashing Serb (I have now trademarked this name and intend to bequeath it upon my first-born) you will need:

4 slices of ginger 1 lime slice 4 cl VSOP Cognac 6 cl lemonade a fine peel of cucumber

Place the lime and ginger into a glass, and add 2 cl of Cognac.  Then add ice and stir. Add the rest of the Cognac the lemonade – then, finally add the cucumber peel.

Watching the inexorable and tragic dismemberment of Greece

By Charles Hampden-Turner, co-author of Nine visions of capitalism.

In comedy, opposed values bounce off each other harmlessly and humorously and we laugh at human frailty. In tragedy, opposed values grind painfully against each other in a strife that destroys all that lies between them. In Greece today the comic festivals are over and we are watching tragedy in real time, from which there may be no way out. Europe’s cultural wars are rooted in religion; despite the fact that piety and worship are diminishing, religion has shaped us for centuries and left its mark. To the North and West are the Protestants, rule-bound, individualist, neutral, analytical, abstract, impassive and self-controlled. To the South and East are the Catholics and Greek Orthodox, exceptional, communal, passionate, holistic, earthy and self-indulgent. Economically, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Finland and North America are doing better than Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and France and even the latter owes much of its wealth to Huguenots, its Protestant minority. Partial exceptions are Austria and Belgium.

If we add to this mix, then the cultural revolution of the late sixties and early seventies demonstrated that much of the Western world tipped over from a culture of production to one of consumption; life was to be enjoyed! However, the postponement of gratification began to erode. The Catholic and Greek Orthodox countries had always been ‘indulgent’; started by the sale of indulgences well before the Catholic Reformation. The religious services of Catholics and the Greek Orthodox Church have always been spectacular, full of mysterious exceptions, decorative, colourful and rich. In contrast, those of the Protestants have been full of rules: restrained, plain-spoken, sparse, subdued and frugal. The arrival of the consumer culture only exaggerated the luxurious strain in southern religions.

Two popular films of the time celebrated this difference and took the Greek side. Zorba the Greek, from the novel by Nikos Kazantzaki featured Basil, a Greek writer, educated in Britain whose intellect had strangled his emotions. He was re-visiting his lost origins. He meets Zorba, earthy, lascivious and passionate who teaches Basil how to dance with joy. Only Zorba weeps for Stella, a free-spirited widow who sleeps around and is decapitated by angry villagers when her locally popular footballing lover kills himself. Basil, who also slept with her, turns her death into a lofty abstraction. Zorba is the Vitalist, the hero of the counter-culture, who lives life to the full and celebrates the sensations of the here and now.

The second film was Never on Sunday, also a celebration sexuality and joy, in which Homer, an overly serious and solemn American academic and tourist encounters Ilya, a Greek prostitute, who enjoys her sailor-clients, but ‘never on Sunday’, clinging to her last vestiges of piety. Homer, in love with classical Greece but ignorant of modern Greek mores, tries to reform Ilya, but is instead seduced by her joyous lifestyle. Taken by him to tragic plays she insists that all protagonists therein ‘went down to sea-shore’ and had a party and will not hear Homer’s denials. The plot of Pygmalion is turned upside down with the pupil subverting her trainer who in the end wants only to make love to her.

But all ceremonies of joy come to an end and what we face in Greece today harks back to classic tragedy in which Dionysus has drunk and feasted too much for too long while the bean-counters of the European Union sternly disapprove. Greece has failed to collect its own taxes, failed to cut an ever-mounting deficit, distributed pensions it cannot afford and is in debt to the tune of $50 billion and may take forty years of iron discipline to dig itself out of the hole, a virtue it does not possess! On the one hand is the austerity proclaimed by the Protestant Northwest and insisted upon by creditors who could lose everything. On the other hand is the refusal of a culture of vibrancy and celebration to be reduced to rags and penury. As Lord Byron put it, ‘eternal summer gilds them yet’ and Greece is the land of vacations and aesthetic sensibilities. Ironically both sides are correct. Greece is a victim of its own long refusal to face economic realities. To that extent Germany and the European Commission are correct. However, austerity has clearly worsened not improved Greece’s plight and it’s hard to think of a policy that goes so much against the cultural grain of its people: they are suffering misery and this will only impoverish them further.

Cocktails for Wimbledon Round 2

It’s day 4 of Wimbledon and since yesterday was the hottest July on record, it is appropriate that today, rain is scheduled to interrupt play. What is Wimbledon without a rain break? It’s like the adverts on the BBC, gives you time to pop the kettle on and catch your breath from moving your head up and down your TV screen (or if you’re lucky enough to get tickets, left and right). We’re not really sure that tea is the best antidote to a rain break; we think that cocktails are much more chic.

In his second round, Andy Murray will play Dutchman Robin Haase. Since we can’t be there to cheer Andy on or should ‘come on, Tim’ loudly at the telly in jest, we thought we’d come up with a few cocktails that you can make at home and that Andy can swig in the dressing room once play has been suspended.

Are you Hasse-ing a good time? Yes, that’s right, we went there. But what better cocktail for a Dutchman than one that features ‘Dutch courage’, or gin to most of us, which originates from the spirit genever; we think that Hasse is going to need some serious Dutch courage today when he squares up against a previous winner of the tournament.

Mix 3/4 oz gin with 3/4 oz Green Chartreuse, 3/4 oz Maraschino liqueur and 3/4 oz lime juice over ice in a shaker. Shake, and strain into a cocktail glass.

We think that this will be very refreshing on such a hot day, stick a cherry in it if you like, they’re in season and will really bring out that liqueur!

Ginger on Court One What’s more British than lashings of ginger beer while watching the LTA’s annual fete? For those in the Murray camp (I think that’s all of us, COME ON, TIM) why not try this awfully refreshing fruity drink:

Mix 1 part mandarin vodka, 2 parts ginger beer, 1 part lemon juice, 1 part melon liqueur and 2 dashes strawberry puree in a cocktail sheker. Shake and pour into a chilled glass.

Business on the inside (an Orange is the New Black guide to getting ahead)

I am hoping by now that fans of the fantastic Netflix series, Orange is the New Black are all caught up with season three and now regretting that five-hour binge last Saturday so that they could drag out the magic just a bit longer. That’s the problem with instant streaming, it’s like crack, we can’t help ourselves and before we know it, we’re left waiting eleven months for the new series.

So Litchfield is evolving and we have learnt that it is still no fun being on the Inside. Favourite Nikki learnt to her peril that going into business with the guards will only end badly for half of the partnership (hint: not the one on the government payroll). Our hearts were simultaneously broken when we realised that we were so desperate for the fairy tale of John Bennett and Daya to work out (even though we knew it was never going to happen). And who’d have though back in season one that Pensatucky would turn out to be the favourite?!

So now that we’re on the comedown, we’ve had time to think about the lessons that we can take from the Litchfield crew. Piper, though arguably the most boring character on the show despite being the centre point, really came into her own in season 3. Hardened by months in prison, countless (we’ve lost count) breakups with Alex and Larry and learning that the love of your life ‘dobbed you in’ is enough to turn even the most optimistic of people against the world. Piper is now top dog of the prison contraband but, when in seasons 1 and 2 things were being smuggled into the prison (by Red and then Vee) now Piper has come up with a genius plan to bring the business of Litchfield to the outside world.

I won’t give you all the gory details of her business model but essentially, she uses extra fabric from her sewing job to make knickers for the girls to wear and then sell to creepy men on the outside who are into ‘that kind of thing’. It turns out that there are quite a few men who love women’s unwashed underwear (in the world of Orange is the New Black, at any rate) and so Piper’s business is booming. However, as with any illegal set-up, there are issues, how will she get the contraband out of the prison? (befriend the vulnerable boy-guard) how will she convince the ladies to participate? (offer them food as a reward – they’re not dogs, Piper!).

Nevertheless, in a prison, there’s a fair few crafty criminals afoot and it isn’t long until they realise that Piper is making a killing from her business while they, the workers, are getting the flavouring from a pot noodle. It isn’t long before workers’ rights are on the agenda. But prison isn’t like the outside world and Piper, keen to stay ahead of the game and in charge fired Flaca but ensures that the girls will be paid. There are less-than-subtle references to The Godfather as Piper tells Flaca that she is the Luca Brasi of the group.

Piper’s rise to ‘Godfather’ of Litchfield status was definitely not what we saw coming when she walked into the prison two seasons ago. After her very long and poetic business proposition, she now calls the shots and it is her that the prisoners go to when they need something.

So we’re not advising that you go get yourself arrested and then become leader of the gang in a prison, but what business lessons can we take from this? Firstly, always have your wits about you. When you’re at the top of the food chain, so to speak, there will always be those who will seek to usurp your power (take note, Cersei Lannister). After getting a (not very cool) prison tattoo that read ‘trust no bitch’ from new girlfriend Stella, Piper should have taken the hint rather than let Stella take all of her money. However, it was Stella who paid the heavy price and followed Nikki to maximum security after Piper set her up for a fall.

We have learnt from Piper’s backstory that she has spent lots of time with drug lords and so is wise as to how to deal with those who betray her trust. Though she is not dealing in heroin, the underwear might as well be Class A drugs. Piper’s instinct for business has been formed from a business model that is more than likely going to land you in jail.

But what we can take from Piper’s story is her entrepreneurial spirit. Even in prison she is taking full advantage of her position and exploiting the gaps in the system that have allowed her business to flourish. So no, please don’t sell your used knickers on the black market, but look for opportunity even in the most dire of situations. If Piper can make loads of ‘dollar’ behind bars, imagine what you could do with a great idea, enthusiasm and a small start-up company.