samedi 15 novembre 2008

L'innovation est une courte folie

Un échange avec quelqu'un qui veut transformer radicalement (révolution) le système bancaire, pour éviter les crises, m'amène à synthétiser une vieille idée : toute innovation est précédée d'une phase de folie, c'est elle qui fait les crises. Commentaire en VO :
  1. I suspect that people can always find a way to create bubbles. During the Internet bubble new valuation techniques were introduced to inflate company prices. Companies were supposed to own a part of their customers’ incomes...
  2. I have learned you can’t predict the future. Those who have tried to build a better world (French revolutionaries or neocons) have ended up engineering disasters. I have also learned that you can make work nearly everything. Even if it seems broken. I believe in evolutions not revolutions.
  3. I suspect that most crises come from “irrational exuberance”, they start with an innovation (anything: Internet, stem cells, properties in Florida…). Some people are extremely fast at finding uses for them and at marketing them. Hence bubbles. Once blown up, the innovation is no longer dangerous. I tend to believe that preventing this irrational phase is unlikely. In a way there is nothing wrong about it: enthusiasm is a kind of useful engine. However if we were able to detect bouts of exuberance earlier, we could manage it better.
Sur ma vision des crises : Capitalisme et destruction.

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