This chapter contains a selection of theories in sections 6.1-6.2 and some reflections on methods in section 6.3. My suggested answer to the research question is found in section 6.4.
The British music critic Bob Edmands wrote in 1975 an article called "Have Pity for the Rich".
"After the first top album, what incentive does a rock millionaire have to work on his second? Is it good for musicians to earn all that, and is it good for us to help them? ... The idle rich have always had time on their hands. ... There's one problem a rock millionaire has to face - imprisonment. Life under mansion-arrest must be a debilitating experience." [Note 219]
It is not probable that Friis and Zennström will experience the social isolation of the rock musicians. They wished to make big business, and they succeeded. But suddenly they are so rich that will be meaningless for them to try to spend their fortunes in ordinary consumption. Staffan Linder published in 1970 his book on "The Harried Leisure Class", a lament for the wealthy man who suddenly finds himself ...
"... drinking Brazilian coffee, smoking a Dutch cigar, sipping a French cognac, reading The New York Times, listening to a Brandenburg Concerto and entertaining his Swedish wife – all at the same time, with varying degrees of success." [Note 220]
Or, as Larry Ellison puts it:
"When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal." [Note 221]
Schumpeter has some interesting points in his description of the entrepreneur, not all of which are true in Friis and Zennström's case:
"Because being an entrepreneur is not a profession and as a rule not a lasting condition, entrepreneurs do not form a social class in the technical sense, as, for example, landowners or capitalists or workmen do. Of course the entrepreneurial function will lead to certain class positions for the successful entrepreneur and his family. It can also put its stamp on an epoch of social history, can form a style of life, or systems of moral and aesthetic values; but in itself it signifies a class position no more than it presupposes one." [Note 222]
"The entrepreneurial kind of leadership, as distinguished from other kinds of economic leadership such as we should expect to find in a primitive tribe or a communist society, is of course colored by the conditions peculiar to it. It has none of that glamour which characterises other kinds of leadership. It consists in fulfilling a very special task which only in rare cases appeals to the imagination of the public. For its success, keenness and vigor are not more essential than a certain narrowness which seizes the immediate change and nothing else. ...
Add to this the precariousness of the economic position both of the individual entrepreneur and of entrepreneurs as a group, and the fact that when his economic success raises him socially he has no cultural tradition or attitude to fall back upon, but moves about in society as an upstart, whose ways are readily laughed at, and we shall understand why this type has never been popular, and why even scientific critique often makes short work of it." [Note 223]
Also John Kenneth Galbraith is concerned with the suddenly wealthy in the first chapter of "The Affluent Society":
"Also, until he learns to live with his wealth, he will he will have a well-observed tendency to put it to the wrong purposes or otherwise to make himself foolish." [Note 224]
Are predictions possible? According to Gareth Morgan, the whole history of organization and management theory is based on the idea that it is possible to organize, predict, and control.
Can we find rules that will predict the emergence of a pattern before it becomes reality? This is a quest that drives much of science and indeed much of the ideology of Western civilization." [Note 225]
Darrel Huff proposes that one must take care of "everything else being equal":
"Extrapolations are useful, particularly in that form of soothsaying called forecasting trends. But in looking at the figures or the charts made from them, it is necessary to remember one thing constantly: The trend-to-now may be a fact, but the future trend represents no more than an educated guess.
Implicit in it is "everything else being equal" and "present trends continuing." And somehow everything else refuses to remain equal, else life would be dull indeed." [Note 226]
Where will Friis and Zennström continue their work?
Here is a guess that is at least partly seriously meant, if Friis and Zennström choose to stay with eBay and Skype:
It is possible that eBay will allow Friis and Zennström to cannibalize the newly acquired payment companies by converting them into a peer-to-peer banking company with a distributed database. If it is technically possible to reduce the traffic to and from the central servers in a bank system, then eBay will have a world-class banking system that easily can compete with all the legacy systems of the world.
Will Friis and Zennström continue to have success in business life?
As shown in section 5.7, Friis and Zennström had advantageous points of departure in both 2000 and 2003. Since then, their position has changed a lot: They have learnt more, and they have turned rich, famous, and successful.
Being rich means that:
Being famous means that:
Being successful means that
Being rich, famous, and successful is not always connected in a simple way. For example your own criterion for success may change to not being famous. For these reasons it is not easy to tell what Friis and Zennström may want now or in the future.
|
There are many reasons for Friis and Zennström's possible success in the future:
I expect Friis and Zennström will continue to have success in business life if they want to. The open question is what they want. |
