THE PERILS OF PREDICTION: How the Father of Globalization got it (partly) wrong

摘要

With equal parts flair, foresight, and far-reaching controversy, Theodore Levitt predicted the future of world trade for five decades. Born March 1,1925, outside Frankfurt, Germany, Levitt immigrated with his family to Dayton, Ohio when he was ten years old, an early Nazi escapee. By 1959, an accomplished academic and oil industry advisor, the former refugee joined the faculty of Harvard Business School. From this position, a quarter-century later, he would announce a new era in retail economics. Levitt's prediction? "Globalization." Levitt loved to argue-in class and in print. "People don't want quarter-inch drills," he famously told his students. "They want quarter-inch holes." A renowned Harvard Business Review essay expanded the point, demanding managers always answer first, "What business are you in?" Railroads, for example, said Levitt, let cars, trucks, ships, and planes "take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business instead of the transportation business."