As I mentioned in a former post there seems to be a downwards trend of capitalism. At least in how the word is used nowadays. But looking at current events, such as the rise of social entrepreneurs, open source and environmentalism capitalism seems to be changing. On facebook a person made a comment about the last article saying that “maybe capitalism is declining but Capital is still running the world”.

Maybe, just maybe, there is even a decline of Capital. The yellow line above shows that the use of the word Capital has been declining since the 90’s. This does not really mean that the actual use of Capital has been declining. But it _do_ show that Capital as a concept is declining.

I also find the rise of human capital, the red line, in the 60’s interesting. It was during that time human resources was coined as well. The emergence of HR and human capital conceptualizes the human being as an important part in making companies and societies more efficient and productive. The bottomline was of course to increase the return on investment.

But then came the rise of social capital, the blue line, in the 90’s which is in a sense human capital in aggregate form which shows all the trust generated between the persons. The emergence of social capital puts the focus on the value these connections bring. The difference between human capital and social capital is that human capital is much easier to retain and confine geographically. After all as long as you nurture your employees or fellow human beings they will provide value back to you, thus retaining and growing human capital.

Social capital on the other hand becomes more valuable the more connections there are. Connections from the inside-out in a company could therefore be as valuable as connections within a company.

A real world example of this is the eco-system of different third-party apps that formed around the twitter platforms. These connections made the twitter platform as well as the third-party applications much more valuable than themselves alone.

But to come back to the start of of this post. Is there a decline in the use of Capital? I would at least say there is a shift of perception towards other types of value other than monetary value. These kind of value depend more on what social capital brings.

I’m there there are many things that I’m missing here, so do fill in the comment field.

Enhanced by Zemanta