Big Pharma creates life-saving vaccines and ramps drug prices up to near-unaffordable levels. Amazon gives us next-day delivery on almost everything and has its workers urinate in bottles rather than take breaks. The original relationship between capital and labour whereby capitalists built and controlled mills and factories no longer applies.
Click the video to watch businessman, academic and esteemed advisor to Governments around the world, Sir John Kay, and Chair of Fellows at Radix Big Tent, Vicky Pryce, in conversation about John’s new book The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (almost) everything we are told about business is wrong for a Radix Big Tent Meet the Leaders interactive webinar.
John Kay’s brilliant and original work overhauls our ideas about business and redefines our understanding of successful commercial activity and the corporation – and describes how we have come to ‘love the product’ as we ‘hate the producer.’
For 20 years, John Kay wrote a regular column for the FT. He holds many academic positions; he is a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford having been elected at the age of 21; he has also been a professor at the London Business School and the University of Oxford, and is currently a visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. He was the first director of Oxford University’s Said Business School. In 1986 he founded Britain’s largest independent economic consultancy, London Economics and is a director of many investment companies. He is the author of numerous books including Other People’s Money (2015). His work has been mostly concerned with the application of economics to the analysis of changes in industrial structure and the competitive advantage of individual firms. His interests encompass both business strategy and public policy.
Vicky Pryce is the Chair of the Fellows at Radix Big Tent and a leading economist whose career includes being Director General for Economics at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), Joint Head of the UK Government Economic Service and Chief Economist and Partner at KPMG. She is currently Chief Economic Adviser and board member at the Centre for Economics and Business Research. She is also Chair of the Economic Advisory Council for the British Chambers of Commerce and a visiting Professor at King’s College, London and Birmingham City University. In addition, she is co-founder of GoodCorporation, a company set up to advise on Corporate Social Responsibility.
