In this community we all share ideas and thoughts on the support economy.

Anyone is welcome and can join in. You are free to roam around and be inspired by the content you find. If you want to really join in, you can do that by registering. In order to do so, click on the “login” button on the bottom right part of the home page, inside the toolbox. On this login page you will find a link “request a membership”. Fill in this registration form (a small one!) and a login and password will be emailed to you instantaneously. Use these to login from now on. Now you are ready to join. You can post comments or respond to posts made by others.
If you want to write your own article, this is also possible. You can do this by clicking “write a post” in the toolbox. After you are done, hit “save”. This will make the article a draft. We, the webmasters, will approve it and after that it will be shown on the homepage (so yes, there is some form of regulation. But this is all to keep this community a nice place for all us regular participants).

Check the contact post below here if you have more questions.

You can also contact us at zuboff_maxmin@thesupporteconomy.com or contact our Speakers Bureau — Tom Nielssen at The Bright Sight Group tom@brightsightgroup.com or 609 466 0077.

* Each organization and each leadership team is unique. That is why we develop collaborative relationships of deep support to meet the varied needs of our clients.

* Ours is not a traditional consulting service offering off-the-shelf products, seminars, and preconceived methodologies. Instead, we establish a unique relationship and dialogue designed to promote each Sponsor’s strategic learning about the support economy and its implications, opportunities, and potential.

* Our activities may include a unique series of one-on-one conversations, learning-intensive discussions with top management and directors, tailored learning with nominated senior managers, and advisory support for lifeboats and new ventures.

* We will travel to a client’s chosen venue, or we will arrange private sessions at an exclusive ocean front inn in Maine.

» Click here to make a request for a speaking engagement.

» Click here for Deep Support Request/ Information.

Today there is a growing chasm between consumers’ needs and the business organizations they depend upon. Too often people must confront a wall of cluelessness and indifference—a commercial world still fitted out for the old mass order. This chasm can be seen each time someone spends the evening checking her phone bill for bogus charges, finds his routine insurance claim rejected or spends hours on the phone trying to fix a malfunctioning new computer. The chasm is expressed in these brutal facts. Only 4 percent of U.S. adults say they trust their HMO; 7 percent, their health insurer; 11 percent, their life insurer; 12 percent, their telco. And the numbers don’t get much better. Seventy-four percent say corporate America’s reputation is “not good” or “terrible,” and 83 percent say that big companies have too much power, according to recent polls.

Jim Maxmin founded and is Chairman of a private investment company, Global Brand Development. He is Advisory Director of MAST Global Ltd., the investment-banking arm of the Monitor Group. Dr. Maxmin is the former CEO of Volvo UK, Thorn EMI Home Electronics, and Laura Ashley PLC. He has been a non-executive director of British Airports Authority PLC, Guest PLC, Progressive Insurance, Scottish Provident Insurance, Dawson International PLC, and many private venture companies. He advises Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies around the world.

If you had described today’s world to any five reasonable people sitting around a table in the year 1910–before the real consolidation and diffusion of the then revolutionary new enterprise logic called managerial capitalism– they would have dismissed that description as utopian. The levels of education, health, recreational activity, living conditions and affordable goods that a majority of people in the developed world enjoy today would have seemed truly outlandish. Similarly in today’s world, a support economy seems too good to be true because it is interpreted through the lens of the now outdated enterprise logic of managerial capitalism. People have learned to expect adversarialism from corporations, and corporations have learned that they can get away with indifference, neglect, and exploitation of their end consumers.

Individuals at every income level need deep support. In fact, in today’s environment wealthy people can paste together some version of deep support to enhance their lives. But everyone else-working single moms, dual career couples, blue-collar families-have urgent needs for deep support. That is why a critical component of the new enterprise logic is what we call infrastructure convergence. We argue that federations can use digital platforms to eliminate the replication of administrative activities across their enterprises. This dramatically reduces working capital and provides the opportunity for order of magnitude shifts in the cost structure of deep support.