The Multiplier Mindset Blog

Author: Dan Sullivan

  • Capitalism And Cooperation

    A number of times over the past few years, I’ve heard commentators speculate that we’re facing the end of capitalism. That’s impossible. The Nobel Prize-winning Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek said the tragedy of capitalism is that it was named by its enemies. Capitalism isn’t actually about capital, it’s about cooperation — an infinitely expanding system…

  • Multiplying Products And Services In The Marketplace

    A recent book by Matt Ridley called The Rational Optimist has captured my attention and imagination. For years, Ridley, a British microbiologist, has been looking at the economic history of the planet, and he now contends that all human progress starts, deepens, and expands as the result of a single daily activity: trading goods and…

  • Multiply The Opposite Of Everything You Dislike

    Back in 1980, I picked up a book that I have read five times over the past 30 years, called The Technological System by Jacques Ellul. In it, Professor Ellul describes how technology is a profoundly self-generating process in human affairs that impacts every aspect of daily life. By “technology,” he does not just mean…

  • Multiplier Tools That Are Building Us

    Anyone who followed the development of television in the 1960s knows of Marshall McLuhan. One of McLuhan’s sayings is a perfect description of the multiplier universe in the 21st century: “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

  • Capitalism 2.0

    In the past 200 years, capitalism has made great strides in increasing employment and the quality of life for more people in more places than any other structure.

  • Disruption Is An Opportunity for Multipliers

    For the past 35 years of being a business coach, I’ve tested and proven the multiplier approach to organizational transformation with thousands of entrepreneurial firms in 60 different industries around the world. I’ve done small business coaching with firms of just two or three people right up to entrepreneur coaching with the leaders of multinational…

  • Multipliers’ Transformational Effect On Bureaucracies

    Looking at the existing structures of our modern societies — especially the bureaucratic structures of education and employment — you can see why so many people never develop themselves as creators of multipliers: They work in tightly controlled structures and processes that allow little or no room for personal initiative. They’re expected to do work…

  • Enjoyment As A Multiplier

    More than 200 years ago, Adam Smith, considered by many to be the father of modern economics, identified the division of labor as the means to multiply human results to create wealth. But Smith lived in an age where it would be remarkable just to have everyone employed at something. It was an extraordinary feat…

  • How To Create Multipliers

    Anyone who wants to create multipliers can do so. What it takes is a mindset that seeks out the multipliers in every situation.

  • Creators And Consumers

    While some people in our multiplier age are having a better, easier life, for many others, things remain difficult and seem likely to get even worse. They find themselves feeling cheated. Sure, there are always more things to buy — and at lower and lower prices. But being a consumer is not the same as…