John Kay

The growth of the trading culture has encouraged the belief that the only measure of value is what someone is willing to pay. But this is a mistake.

If unplanned social interactions are the key to a vibrant city, they are also the key to a vibrant organisation.

Narratives of industry evolution often represent fairy tales constructed by corporate financiers, or ambitious chief executives. They relentlessly seek rationale, however spurious, for the next deal.

As the commercial market is being transformed, anyone who thinks that the policy challenge is to restrict internet piracy has missed the point.

The books that Britain exports have long been made from trees grown abroad. Then globalisation meant the paper was also made abroad, and increasingly the printing took place overseas. Soon selling a book will involve no physical objects. The division of labour becomes ever finer and generally increases the wealth of all involved in the production process.

It is particularly sad for me that James Black, the Nobel prize winning chemist, should have died in the same week that my latest book, Obliquity, is published. I am indebted to Black for helping to frame the idea – and for proposing the term “obliquity” to describe it.

Digital media is the future and two decades from now the book business will look very different.

Like all business success, innovative success is based on matching capabilities to market.