Turnaround Challenge

Business and the City of the Future

Michael Blowfield and Leo Johnson

Accessibly written, polemical, and bold exploration of how current crises facing business could be more effectively addressed by 'congruent capitalism', a new form of industrial economy
Wide variety of theoretical and empirical research provides unique insight into business challenges posed by sustainability and other contemporary crises
Positions business and the role of business in society at the heart of the analysis
Demonstrates how business can meet the new challenges, including new business models, the role of established companies, and the role of an entrepreneurial state
Combines data from across many disciplines, such as business studies, climatology, food studies, economics, anthropology, sociology, and history

Turnaround Challenge

Business and the City of the Future

Michael Blowfield and Leo Johnson

Description

Do we have the rights to optimism? Can capitalism deliver a next great wave of growth? "The future," wrote William Gibson, "'is already here. It just isn't evenly distributed yet." Lucid and polemical, Turnaround Challenge is a dig into that future and its meaning for business. It dissects the nexus of social, economic, environmental and governance crises confronting us, and a series of colliding megatrends with the potential to reshape opportunities for growth.

Three cities of the future are emerging. The first is Petropolis, the alluringly familiar but decreasingly resilient city, locked into the century old technologies of fossil fuel-driven mass production. This is the city of rising inequality, credit-fuelled consumption, offshored jobs, climate volatility, and unsustainable household and national debt. The second city is Cyburbia. This is mass production on the steroids of IT: the latest manifestation of science fiction's city without pain, but one inhabited by voice-activated popcorn dispensers, of athletics' shoes with in-built Twitter feeds, of sensor-packed and censoring glass towers that risk reducing their citizens to digital factors of production in the supply chain of big data. The third is the Distributed City, where technology is deployed with the intent to connect us not virtually but physically--from Nairobi's network of innovation spaces to Hamburg's Participatory Budgeting experiments, from Barcelona's network for micro-manufacturing, to Austin's distributed smart grid.

These are the cities of society's future, and they have very different implications for business success, and our ability to navigate the social, economic, and environmental megatrends that confront us. Blowfield and Johnson present the DNA of the winners of the future, high growth and disruptive businesses, emerging from the bottom up, and with the capacity to tackle society's biggest challenges head on.

Turnaround Challenge

Business and the City of the Future

Michael Blowfield and Leo Johnson

Turnaround Challenge

Business and the City of the Future

Michael Blowfield and Leo Johnson

Author Information

Michael Blowfield is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment where he researches business transformation in an era of climate change and resource constrained economies. He is also a Teaching Fellow in Corporate Responsibility at the London Business School and Visiting Professor at Middlesex University Business School. He has worked as an academic and consultant in the field of corporate social and environmental responsibility with a particular focus on the socio-political context of corporate responsibility, and the role of business in society.

Leo Johnson is the Co-Founder of Sustainable Finance, now a part of the PwC group. He is a Business Fellow of the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise & Environment, and a Judge of the Financial Times "Boldness in Business" Awards. As the Presenter of the BBC World News show "Down to Business" he has worked with social enterprises around the world that address the challenges of reaching scale. Formerly with the Environment Department of the IFC in Washington, he is a Trustee of the UK's Green Alliance and the New Economics Foundation.

Turnaround Challenge

Business and the City of the Future

Michael Blowfield and Leo Johnson

Reviews and Awards

"Turnaround Challenge marries innovation to Jane Jacobs. It provides a compelling analysis of the next wave of urban-propelled economic growth that promises to reshape business as well as the cities we live in." --Richard Florida, author of Rise of the Creative Class, University of Toronto and NYU

"A fast-paced, hope-filled yet deeply grounded tour of the innovations and technologies with the potential to resolve our era's greatest environmental, social and economic challenges, where unrestrained business alone has clearly failed." --David Rowan, Editor, WIRED magazine

"A fascinating journey that begins with the birth of capitalism and mass consumption and engagingly describes why this current model is no longer fit for purpose, given current and complex challenges. The authors draw on science, philosophy, history, and political economics, as well as business and social trends, to weave three realistic future scenarios and their respective implications for business, government, and communities. This book is a highly rewarding read for those of us who want to believe in the capacity of human beings to transform systems and practices." --Pamela Hartigan, Director, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, University of Oxford

"This book is full of information, full of important ideas, very readable, and highly relevant to the challenges we are all faced with at this time. Two things are certain: society is struggling to get to grips with its sustainability challenges, and business will have a huge influence in meeting those challenges moving forwards. The book sets out clearly the challenges for business in both rich and poor countries. More than that, it shows the shortcomings of conventional thinking, and offers engaging new arguments for practical new directions for business to explore and suggestions for how it can be encouraged to act." --Professor Sir David King, Chairman, Future Cities Catapult

"Vital and timely, fresh and provocative, this is an exciting vision of the next wave of business growth. It should be indispensable reading for the next generation of business leaders." --Professor Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice, London Business School and Hotspots Movement founder

"Written for 'business readers,' this book brings together ideas from business, economics, and technology and illustrates them with examples of new products (e.g., solar-powered portable lights) and novels forms of urban development (e.g., smart cities such as Songdo, South Korea) to sketch the possibilities for a 'distributed economy.'" --CHOICE