We are republishing the information included in the book “Growth Crisis 2008-2010!” to provide information on what we consider is the nature of the European conjuncture.

The history of the crisis has two basic preconditions and two main triggering causes.

The preconditions are the fall of the communist system and the use of consumerism in order to sustain scarcity as an economic driver.

The two triggering causes were the technological plateau and shareholders dominance in economic organizations.

The dot.com “prelude” was a demonstration of the technological plateau and of shareholders’ dominance using the money of the “market”.

Considering the forecast made using the unicist ontology of evolution, the recovery from the crisis will be based on a structural change of the rules of the game.

Economy will be much more institutionalized with two extreme different solutions.

Those who believe in bottom-up development will develop strong institutions to inhibit the entropy of the economic system.

Those who believe in top-down development will develop institutions to control the market. In the middle, there will be different solutions to catalyze the market growth.

Considering similar economic structures, bottom-up approaches will grow faster than top-down approaches. Top-down approaches will develop in a more secure and slower way and with a higher risk of corruption.

Feudalist capitalism, where there is no real participation of the market in the property of companies will develop naturally towards a top-down approach.

Denial of the crisis is a natural response when structures quake. Denial has two aspects. The positive aspect is that it avoids uncontrollable changes. The negative aspect is that it inhibits the evolution of counter-cycles.

Globalization, being a controversial word in the past, will begin to make sense in order to build the new economic system.

The different types of democracy will develop their bottom-up and top-down trade-offs in order to maintain their participation model.

Businesses have the responsibility to survive and at the same time to develop growth counter-cyclical strategies.

The necessary condition to build a counter-cycle is the development of a niche market. These niche markets behave like parallel realities.

To access a counter-cyclical effect it is necessary to change the concept of what is being offered to the market. The concept to be introduced might be redundant with the existing concept, with the implicit risk of cannibalization. It also might be complementary generating an adjacent market.

The introduction of a different concept of product or service does not generate a counter-cycle. Counter-cycles require also the existence of credibility and trust. Its implementation requires similar or complementary products and services but based on a different concept.

Counter-cyclical strategies require creativity and innovation.

Access or request a Unicist Tweetinar on this subject at:
http://www.academic.unicist.org/unicist_tweetinars.shtml

Learn more about the trend of ontology based solutions for businesses:
http://www.unicist.net/obs.shtml

Peter Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute is the pioneering complexity science research organization developing solutions for complex adaptive systems using ontogenetic ontologies and object driven technologies. More than 3,500 ontological researches were developed since 1976 until September 2010 in the field of individual, institutional and social evolution.