New Company: Philosophical Applications
I would like to announce the formation of a new company by myself and partners. It’s called Philosophical Applications and the website can be accessed under applyphil.com. I won’t explain it here because it is better explained there. You can go to the website by clicking on the Consulting button on this website. Any comments welcome.
Strikes me as a wonderfully novel and worthy project. Apt to the times. Corporations, after all, are people too—at least as far as our American Supreme Court has judiciously determined. Thus they stand equally in need of considered philosophical counsel (the “snark” in that comment is directed only at the Court’s decision). In any case, I wish for you and your partners a surpassing success. Didn’t John Cleese, later in life, offer to the business community a similar sort of counsel, leavened, ofcourse by his Pythonesque mode of presentation?
Don’t know about John Cleese, but I hope corporations see the advantages of philosophical input. Didn’t Plato offer advice to olive growers (something about the ideal form of the olive and not growing them in caves)?
It seems like it would be useful to mention in your sales pitch standard, non-philosophical consulting firms and why the services offered by your philosophical alternative are superior.
“Philosophers do it better”.
I will be very interested to hear how it goes (to the extent you can share a case study). From my own experience, the increasing complexities, risks of disruption and regulatory focus in large organisations make it harder for snr management to get the right balance on a number of dimensions: strategy vs execution, investing in the short vs long term, focus on what they know vs learning what they don’t, one team vs individual accountability, return vs risk vs cost….. So assisting management in cultivating qualities of corporate introspection (that involves looking out as much as looking in), so they can self assess where they are most out of balance, would be invaluable. (Typically consultants don’t do this: they usually provide market maps, opinions or solutions – often regurgitated ones.) Good luck!
Yes, it seems like a valuable service not generally provided, but will they have the wisdom to see it that way?
Modern American corporations are always honking about discovering and then pursuing corporate “best practices”,but ever since Reagan, “best practices”, seem to be cashed out only in terms such as Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman would find congenial. The “Invisible Hand” of market correction is idle without transparency, but transparency must be enforced by regulation and the diligence and good faith of regulators. Without enforced transparency, capitalism is self-refuting— theoretically and historically.
I daresay I will run up against a good many Randians, God save us.