Opinion

Return to the economy of ‘individuals’!

August 26, 2018
Return to the economy of ‘individuals’!

Hussein Shobokshi

TECH giant Apple, which surpassed $1 trillion market valuation recently, continues to draw public attention over its unprecedented, historic feat.

Three more companies — Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet (owner of Google) — are also in a tight race to reach the same level.

With the grand success of these market leaders, we are in fact witnessing a return to the past and to the economy of “individuals”.

At the beginning of the 20th century, some of the private companies were named after their founders, which made their mark on the world economy.

For example, Graham Bell, who is known for his invention of the telephone device, founded the Bell Telephone Company which later came to be known as American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T).

AT&T, because of its monopoly, was a highly profitable company but the communications giant lost its credibility in the 1980s when anti-trust charges were filed against it and it was later broken into a number of separate companies.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor Company, whose founder Henry Ford pioneered the automotive assembly line and designed the Model T, which revolutionized popular consumer cars, creating a huge segment of consumers.

Today, we are seeing the same phenomenon.

A company founded by an individual having a “different” vision is changing the laws and rules of the game and bringing a transformation in that particular sector.

As a matter of fact, Apple is still following the successful path its founder Steve Jobs had carved for the company. All the products it sells are still the products of the innovative ideas of its late founder regardless of the developments and reforms in the new settings.

The same can be said of Amazon, which is based on the vision and approach of its founder, Jeff Bezos, who reintroduced the concept of shopping completely by controlling electronic shopping around the world and breaking the concept of traditional retail sales, causing closure of dozens of shops and shopping centers.

The same is true of the influence of Jack Ma, a Chinese businessman and founder of the famous electronic shopping giant Alibaba, which came after Amazon and became the latter’s fierce competitor.

Today, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Electric Motors, is doing the same. He reinvented the concept of energy not only for cars but the man has a plan and vision to use the same principle used in his cars on a model prepared for airplanes, ships and even homes and cities because he believes it is flexible and expandable and increasing the model size.

What applies to them it applies to the founder of Uber, the world’s largest transport company with no single car, or Facebook, the world’s largest publishing company without a single newspaper or magazine, and Air P & B, Hotels in the world without a single room. It is the economy of “individuals” based on the freedom to innovate and the absolute support of law, the non-tightening and cracking down on those who think differently and to allow non-traditional channels of financing.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel, so it remains the American economy’s secret and magic and it is the ability to achieve the entire equation continuously.


August 26, 2018
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