Why Ever More Large Companies Will Collapse Suddenly

In the next years and decades we will witness more frequent events of collapse of organizations and companies which we thought were almost like institutions in the economic landscape.

Bank-Run
A bank run, the typical extreme event where a quasi-institution falls

That’s at least the view of Jeremy Rifkin in his interesting book ‘The Zero Marginal Cost Society‘. He quotes an economist of the XXth century, Oskar Lange, to have said: “The stability of the capitalist system is shaken by the alternation of attempts to stop economic progress in order to protect old investments and tremendous collapses when those attempts fail“. It was true in all times. Today more and more industries struggle to defend their position and their investments as the Fourth Revolution spreads. The more they are in oligopolistic or monopolistic situation, the longer they will resist – and the harder the fall will be. The larger and global they are, the more widespread the consequences will be.

As we move into the Collaborative Age in the next few years and decades we can expect some dramatic collapses to happen as many dominating organizations will resist until the end while their economic model will crumble.

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