Steve Weber

Political Economist and Critically Acclaimed Author

BIG IDEAS

• Thinking About Risk
  Is risk bad for business? Judging from how financial and operating risk are treated by many companies, avoidance and containment are paramount. Risk is something to be managed, reduced, hedged, or sold to others. But the original concept of risk, derived from early European sea-faring adventurism, contained a powerful sense of opportunity and reward as well as downside and danger. Steve shows how winning businesses in the future will be those that are best able to balance coping strategies—which are defensive and focused on avoiding downside risks—with an increasing mix of exploitation and exploration strategies that embrace risk and make the most of the opportunities it presents. This will require more than just continuous improvement in traditional risk management tools; it will also involve a shift in mindset and focus.
• The Success of Open Source
  Steve lays out a series of provocative ideas about open source software and its broader implications. Based on his critically acclaimed book, The Success of Open Source, this presentation highlights why open source will have a deeper impact on work process than it will on software; why it’s driving a fundamental shift in the notion of property; and why the whole world stands to benefit enormously from the spread of open source, given that software is a key enabling tool for the next phase of global economic growth.
• Global Ambition and the America—China Relationship
  America faces a competitor in China with the military capacity of the 1970s Soviet Union and the economic vitality of 1980s Japan. And the strained relationship between China and the United States is now at the center of the world economy and security systems. While we consider the globalization of markets and economic interdependencies we are forging, we best remember that this is a political relationship through and through. It’s about power and control as much as it is about wealth. Steve argues that for the U.S. to win in this game, it will need new approaches. Rather than push the economic liberalism of the past 200 years, we should forge ahead with new models of social and economic collaboration, which will enable the next wave of wealth creation. Steve lays out an agenda for action in this new world order.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Steve Weber is professor of political science at UC Berkeley, where he directs the multi-disciplinary Institute of International Studies. His research and consulting work consistently breaks new ground in areas as diverse as health care telecommunications, U.S. foreign and intelligence policy, software markets, and the emerging geopolitical issues of the 21st century, particularly around Sino-American relations. His advisory work has benefited organizations as diverse as IBM, the CIA, The Ford Foundation, Chiron, and the Library of Congress. His most recent book, The Success of Open Source, is an internationally acclaimed study of the political economy of the open source software community (2004 Winner of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Award Competition, Computer and Information Science).

A Closer Look at Steve

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Steve's current research agenda?

Steve’s current research focuses on central issues of how firms and nations will compete in the first decades of the 21st century.

Following on his recent work about the economics and politics of the communities that build open source software, he’s currently writing a book that explains how firm strategies and government policies can be built to take advantage of open source style value creation systems, in sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals, entertainment, telecommunications, and software.

He’s also writing about the most important evolving relationship in global politics: between the United States and China. To avoid slipping into a relationship that combines the worst of the US-Soviet Cold War with the worst of the US-Japan economic conflicts of the 1980s, Steve believes that American capitalism needs to undergo substantial change—a second American revolution of sorts—that is as much about ideology as it is about technology and tools.

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Steve's expertise, and what's ahead on his schedule?

Steve works with a broad range of organizations in the capacities that suit them best. He particularly enjoys small group workshops built around defined problem-solving agendas. He frequently delivers keynote speeches at large conferences and meetings, and he gets his real enjoyment (and so does the audience!) from interactive question-and-answer sessions.

Steve’s long experience in university teaching leaves a simple maxim: present provocative ideas in simple, story-telling language… and use the intelligence of the group to make the experience shine for everyone. He is a consummate entertainer, but he has zero tolerance for oversimplification and for slogans that sound good but prove meaninglessness under closer examination. He prepares for every engagement with a strong commitment to actionable outcomes.

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Steve's thinking and inspires his work?

Steve’s deepest inspiration in the field of economics came—and continue to come—from Tom Schelling and Albert Hirschmann. Both are often thought of as maverick economists, in part because they prefer the power of simple insight to complex formal models and because they were natural incorporators of politics and sociology into economic thinking. Schelling’s 1960 book The Strategy of Conflict remains, to Steve’s mind, the single best articulation of key strategic concepts equally powerful for national nuclear deterrence strategies as they are for firms in competitive markets.

Steve’s historian of choice is Gordon S. Wood, who wrote The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which explains powerfully the ideological basis for the exceptional American performance in the global political economy up to the present.

Steve’s favorite contemporary fiction author is Paul Auster, the great minimalist of Brooklyn, whose prose comes close in depth and quality to Herman Melville. Yet, Steve firmly believes that nothing from the present quite “lives up” to the beauty and depth of Moby Dick.

RECOMMENDED READING
What's on Steve's must-read list?

Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, H.W. Brands

Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s

The Two Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future, Richard B. Alley

One or another collection of Sherlock Holmes stories “Arthur Conan Doyle simply could not write a boring sentence.”

MIND FUEL
Which blogs, web sites, and industry events does Steve tap into to feed his mind and fuel his creativity?

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/

According to Steve, “Brad DeLong’s blog is almost always smart, provocative, and fearless (like Brad himself). But for the most part, I skip around and look at lots of different blogs and websites to get a low-cost flavor of the range of debate and—just as important—the ‘mood’ on various issues. Reading blogs can be a dangerous addiction if you spend too much time taking in the views of people with whom you tend to agree. I much prefer reading the thoughts of those on the other side of a debate. To my mind, there is more value in taking their views and arguments seriously, than reveling in an eloquent statement of something that I already believe or agree with.”

OUTREACH
What are Steve's pressing questions, and on which topics does he seek your feedback?

Steve wants to know what people believe that everybody else in the world believes. EVERYBODY, not just some people or most people. In other words, if you had to bet that there is one statement that every human being on this planet could agree with, what would it be? Is there such a statement or a thing?