be careful about what you listen to

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Best interview we’ve read all year. It’s very apropos.

The renowned author, Sylvia Nasar, discusses how the great economists uncovered the basic truth about progress, prosperity, and productivity, and the reasons you should be careful which ideas you listen to. {S+B}.

There is a LOT of ‘spectacular’ nonsense in business economics today. The intangibles world, intellectual capital, so-called value networks, social currency, new economies, and so forth and so on, ad nauseum, are just ridiculous. They are the domain of pseudo-intellectuals, economic dilatants, business consultants and self-appointed thought leaders.

Newsflash: business must focus on productivity. (Gasp!)

Sylvia Nasar is a former economist and a writer for Fortune and the New York Times. Nasar is author of A Beautiful Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1998) -- the best-selling biography of mathematician and game theorist John Nash, later adapted into a hit Hollywood film. Sylvia is also Professor of Business Journalism at the Columbia GSJ. {S+B}.

 

S+B: So what should we learn about the usefulness of economics from the fact that one of the smartest and most creative economists of his time could be so spectacularly wrong?

NASAR: Well, you have to be careful about what you listen to. If what you listen to is that business managers should focus on making their businesses better, because that’s what drives productivity and growth, then I think you’re golden.

Heed Sylvia: be careful which ideas you listen to!



The Thought Leader Interview: Sylvia Nasar  (registration rqr’d)

 

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