Pain and Innovation

The Chinese call it Weiji. In Mandarin the word denotes, from its first character, “crisis,” and from the second character, “crucial or opportune moment.” What opportunities appear in the present global economic crisis? What are the most promising solutions of the many that are being proposed? Under which cover or pretext will they be enacted? I risk a preliminary forecast: Do not expect the birth of a radical new model for the economy, but a new way of connecting its principal sectors. Synergy is appropriate as a name for these processes.

Just like with a coin the planetary crisis that engulfs us has two sides. On one side, “Tails”—where the actual value of the metal piece appears-is, in our case, negative values: employment, economic activity, profits, savings, stock values, available credit, exports, and so on. On the other side of the coin, “Heads” —usually depicting a bust of a president or monarch, a face or a figure of authority—we find a serious but hopeful countenance. The doublesided configuration is a very old numismatic convention. It makes one think about the predecessors of the current crisis.

The Great Depression of the thirties, which also began in the United States, was not only a period of hardship and unemployment—it was a fertile era for social innovation as well. As a response to the economic and social crises of that era, the government initiated a veritable cascade of novel programs and experiments.