About the sixth Kondratieff
Exposé
THE SIXTH KONDRATIEFF
The New Long Business Cycle of the World Economy
The Health Market
as a Motor for Future
Economic Development
© Leo A. Nefiodow
The market economy knows no uniform progression: instead, it regularly
fluctuates between upswing and downturn, boom and bust. People are
generally familiar with short- and medium-term fluctuations of the
economy, lasting between 3-11 years, from their own experience. But the
market economy also shows long-term fluctuations, with a period of 40-60
years. They are known as Kondratieff cycles. These long waves are
triggered by landmark inventions, referred to as basic innovations (see
diagram).
Kondratieff Cycles to Date
Five Kondratieff cycles have come and gone since the late 18th century.
The first long-term cycle was sparked by the invention of the steam
engine and its use, especially in the textiles industry. The second
Kondratieff was the great age of steel. The third was the product of the
electrical engineering and chemicals industries. It was the first
long-term cycle to profit from the practical application of scientific
insights. The basic innovations that triggered the fourth Kondratieff
were petrochemicals and automotive. This brought mass traffic onto roads
and into the air and also marked the culmination of the industrial
society. Since the 1950s, the world economy has been in the fifth
Kondratieff cycle, which is driven by the development and exploitation
of information technology.
Integral Health – The New Mega-market of the 21st Century
Given that most of the service capacity of the fifth Kondratieff cycle
was tapped by the turn of the millennium, this long-term cycle is
rapidly coming to an end. As the fifth runs out, the sixth Kondratieff
has already begun. A detailed analysis shows that the health sector will
be the bearer of the next long-term cycle. Its most important
innovations will be psychosocial health and modern biotechnology (see
diagram). While biotechnology will mainly revolutionize our treatment of
bodily health on the level of biochemical information, the field of
psychosocial health attempts to better understand and tap into humans’
internal information processes, the wide field of mental and social
potentials. Biotechnology and psychosocial competence are the main
pillars of the new basic innovation: information medicine.
Can the health sector really serve as an engine for growth and
employment in future? Usually, medical expenditures are seen as a
negative, as a cost factor that people and companies want to minimize.
So at first glance one might indeed doubt that health is a proper growth
engine – after all, long periods of prosperity were always carried by
productive and “hard” technologies such as the steam engine, railroad,
automotive, information technology in the past. How can a “soft,” a
psychological, mental, social. ecological and spiritual factor become
the bearer of a new growth cycle?
Here we must remind ourselves of the conclusions of modern growth
theories. The most important sources of economic growth are not machines,
goods, hard-technologies, services, not masses of people and not capital,
either. The single most important factor is progress in productivity.
This third factor (beyond labour and capital) is determined by new or
improved skills. In the industrial society, as in the fifth Kondratieff,
cognitive skills (e.g. logical-systematic thinking and good solid
training in computer hardware and software technologies) played a key
role.
The next, sixth Kondratieff cycle will see a radical change in the
competencies and competitive factors that determine productivity. What
will set companies and economies apart in the competition of the future
are the productivity improvements enabled by the health of their people
and the quality of their public health system, seen as a whole: bodily,
mental, psychological, social, ecological and spiritual.
Therefore, our greatest reserves of productivity lie in the
restructuring of health care, in a focus on health rather on illness. We
need new concepts, strategies and approaches to tap these resources –
ones that are designed not to repair disease but instead to produce and
maintain health and well-being, and that take seriously the concept of
humans as whole beings.
Source: Leo A. Nefiodow: Der sechste Kondratieff. Wege zur
Produktivität und Vollbeschäftigung im Zeitalter der Information. Sankt
Augustin; Sixth Edition 2006; Price: 24 EUR. 317 pages with 83
illustrations and 28 tables. Hardcover. ISBN 3-9805144-5-5
