CALIDAD DEL SERVICIO Y ANS

hour. Maybe this is necessary in a market where the average product lifecycle for consumer electronics products is now three months.6_{Still, compared to Walt Disney, Sony’s inno-}

vation record is nowhere. Disney’s CEO Michael Eisner claimed that the company develops a new product – a film, a comic book, a CD or whatever – every five minutes.7

Excess is in and the route to this world of excess is the TV. The temple of our times is not the Church, but the TV. The battle for our souls is acted out every weekday night as David Letterman, king of American late-night TV, fights it out with Jay Leno to capture the interest of the average John and Jane Does of the US TV audience. The concept is simple: ten minutes of talk followed by a commercial; then more talk and a commercial; more talk, more commercials. At the end of the day, the average American citizen has been exposed to some 247 ads.8_{By the time they reach the}

age of 18, they have encountered 350,000 TV commercials. And just wait until we get the Internet live on TV, fully interactive TV. It is coming soon to your living room.

Also knowledge is exploding. Think of the 140,000 IT engineers developing software in Bangalore. Think of the profusion of MBA graduates. Think of the leap in numbers of people going through college. Think of the flood of sci- entists. Think of the well-educated Desert Storm soldiers.

The world is alive with knowledge, with products and services, with information. But more often simply means more of the same. The surplus society has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with sim- ilar educational backgrounds, working in similar jobs, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices, warranties, and qualities. And even though they may not yet know it, all these firms, indi- viduals and customer offerings are competing. This is good news if you are a customer; and time for prayer if you are an executive.

Three key forces lie behind the emergence of the surplus society: the growth in markets resulting in market mania; senseless oversupply; and technological advances which have made communication more or less costless. And behind these forces, we can again discern the influence of changes in technology, institutions and values.

Market mania

The first element in creating this world of excess is the growth in markets. There are now more markets for more things, covering a larger geographical area than ever before. Deregulation and trade liberalization have unleashed market forces on virtually every human activity. At the turn of the twentieth century, some 10–15 percent of the world population lived within a market system. In the 1970s, approximately 40 percent of all individuals lived within such a system. Today, we are talking about 90 percent.9

But not all markets are global yet. Take labor markets. Only 1.5 percent of the workforce works outside its home country. In the European Union, the equivalent number is 2 percent.10_{Capital still flows more freely than people.}

Still, in this crazy world there are markets for absolutely everything. Markets in commodities and capital; body parts; every conceivable type of sex; any industrial component you can think of; and any kind of service you can imagine. There are markets in betting – spread betting applies the logic of the futures exchange to sporting bets; markets in alcohol – a Dutch nightclub entrepreneur operates a futures market in drinks at his clubs; and markets in knowledge and talent.

Feel the funk. If you want to – and can afford to – you can even hire Versailles to throw the ultimate office party. Some 200 years after the French Revolution, the Hall of Battles is yours for a mere $70,000.11 _{Or why not choose}

somewhere a bit further afield, a little different – like the American investment bank which partied in the Forbidden City in the People’s Republic of China. Everything has a price. Markets rule.

Senseless supply

In the recent past the world was a big place. Cutting-edge technological knowledge was to be found in the industrial- ized Western world. That was where the renowned universities, aggressive companies, and other competence- producing organizations, were based. This was the age before the joint venture and the strategic alliance; before collaboration was made easy through technology; before the explosion of new, different technologies.

In this world, demand mostly exceeded supply. After World War II, there was a great surge for new jobs, products and services. The European and Asian industrial infrastruc- tures were in ruins. This was great news for any company in any industry. We were at their mercy – as employees and consumers. Moreover, the rate of technological change and proliferation of customer

preferences was not as great as it now is. Things moved slowly and usu- ally moved locally. This was the world of mass

production where markets were assumed and taken for granted; where customers were told what they wanted – any color so long as it was black. Weighed down with managerial layers and with no apparent need to broaden perspectives, companies sailed on like supertankers on autopilot.

The rocks are here and the lighthouse has closed down. In industry after industry, and in market after market, supply is beginning to exceed demand. Business professors

FU N KY B US I N E SS FUNKY VILLAGE 99

“In the slow-growth 1990s,