In 1995 Dr Jim Maxmin founded Informate Associates, a consultancy that focused on new forms of organisation designed to realise value from the new digital technologies
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The focus was in financial services, technology and FMCG. The range of projects was unusual, for example: - How do I get a product to market 36 hrs after it is designed? How do I deliver services to customers at less than 1p cost? How do I manage virtual supply chains where I have no ownership? How do I manage collaborative working in a professional services organisation?
At the same time Jim Maxmin also became an Advisory Director to Mast Global Ltd the investment banking arm of the Monitor Group. He specialised in providing funding for start up companies in both the UK and USA.
He also remains as a non-executive director on the boards of BAA Plc, Geest Plc Dawson International Plc and Scottish Provident.
Jim Maxmin became CEO and joint Chairman of Volvo UK at the age of 34. He developed the UK into Volvo’s most profitable market in the world over a seven-year period. He joined Thorn EMI PLC as a main board Director.
As the CEO and Chairman of Thorn Home Electronics International, he created a business with turnover in excess of $3bn and 35,000 employees worldwide. He became CEO of Laura Ashley PLC in 1991, successfully returning the company to profitability by 1994. At Laura Ashley, he launched a major strategic alliance with Federal Express that is the subject of six Harvard Business School case studies.
In 2003, drawing on his own management experiences, and the lessons learned from investing and consulting, Jim Maxmin co-authored a book THE SUPPORT ECONOMY- Why Corporations are Failing Individuals and the next Episode of Capitalism - with his wife Shoshana Zuboff, a Professor at the Harvard Business School. The book was named one of the top 10 business books for 2003 by Strategy+Business.
It has won worldwide acclaim. Jim Maxmin and Shoshana Zuboff have lectured all over the world and attend major conferences explaining the radically new ideas in the book. They also hold 'conversations' with the Boards of major global companies examining the future of business and the next phase of wealth creation.
As Jim Maxmin explains, “The Support Economy shows how individuals have changed more than the corporations that serve them for consumption and employment. As a result of this a chasm has opened up between the individual and institutions and over time this has become unbridgeable. This is an historical process that marks the end of one business model and the birth of a new one.
The last time this happened was a century ago when Henry Ford invented mass production and what we now call “managerial capitalism". Ford created wealth beyond imagination. He also created an adversarial managerial culture that was great for making cars but less useful for delivering service and serving today's population.
The model Ford invented is now obsolete and we are waiting for a new model to be invented. This new business model will no longer have value concentrated inside the organisation. Rather, all the value that exists will be inside individuals. In other words it is distributed and thus we are moving into a new era of capitalism, which we call 'distributed capitalism'. In this model advocacy and relationships replace adverserialism and transactions.
The individual is at the centre of the commercial universe. The purpose of commerce is more than products and services- it is providing support to allow individuals to live their lives they way they want to live them.
The old organisational structures are collapsing, and will be replaced with agile ones. The Support Economy aims to provide a unique framework for thinking about the future and the next phases of wealth creation. It is an optimistic book, which outlines the road to a better and more profitable way of doing business”.
