The focus on the firm as a collection of capabilities gives a different and more illuminating perspective for understanding the extraordinary diversity of business organisations and of businesspeople over geographies and over time. The core ideas in this book â collective intelligence, radical uncertainty, disciplined pluralism, relational contracts and the mediating hierarchy â have been extensively developed and discussed by earlier writers, though much of that work has been outside the context of business organisation. The relevance of each to the argument of this book arises from a belief that in the modern world successful commercial relationships are not simply instrumental and transactional; they are social and are embedded in a wider framework of communities and teams. That transactional view was both incorrect and unattractive. This book is written in the hope that a better account of how business and its stakeholders flourish will point the way not just to a better understanding of business but to the better conduct of business itself. In a successor volume I will try to explain some of the implications of that understanding for both business policy and public
Policy.