There’s something refreshing about a book that calmly dismantles decades of corporate dogma without ever lapsing into polemic. John Kay’s The Corporation in the 21st Century is that kind of book. Kay — economist and longtime observer of business — uses insight, history and a wry sense of irony to show how little of what we’re told about business today actually fits the facts. The result is a sweeping, rich analysis that lands with the quiet authority you’d expect from a long-serving Financial Times columnist.

Kay’s core argument is simple but powerful: The language, assumptions and models that still dominate many a boardroom are relics of a bygone age. When capital meant plant and machinery, ownership meant control. But in today’s economy — where companies like Apple, Amazon and Meta derive value not from what they own, but from the ideas and capabilities of their people — that linkage has broken down.

Kay doesn’t just describe the shift — he quietly skewers those in the ‘business-as-usual’ brigade who continue to ignore it. Take the case of ICI, once a global leader in chemicals and Britain’s largest company. In 1987, it had a mission that stated “…Through the achievement of our aim we will enhance the wealth and well-being of our shareholders, our employees, our customers and the communities which we serve and in which we operate.” By 1994, that had shrunk to a single aim: to maximise shareholder value. It’s this single minded pursuit of profit Kay suggests, that hastened ICI’s decline.

That struck a particular chord. I remember when John Harvey-Jones, the former Chairman of ICI (1982–87), was one of the most recognisable figures in British business. His BBC series Troubleshooter brought business dilemmas into the living rooms of millions and I once saw him speak at an event in London, shortly after starting my first business in 1989. He was inspiring. And in hindsight, he represented a more balanced vision of leadership and governance — one that saw the corporation as a force for good in society.

Kay makes the case that we’ve strayed far from that vision. His damning case studies of GE, Deutsche Bank, Sears and others show how businesses lost their way by pursuing short-term financial returns at the expense of enduring value. As someone deeply involved in the evolving relationship between purpose and profit, I found this part of the book especially resonant. It reinforces a core belief: That the course a business takes is determined not just by strategy, but by what it sees itself for.

This is not nostalgia. Kay makes clear that business must move on. He embraces the shift from material to intangible value — from manufacturing to problem-solving, from command-and-control to collaboration. His admiration for Apple is telling and not for its balance sheet, but for its ideas — and the design ethos that made those ideas real. In that sense, Kay and Patrick Grant (author of Less) arrive at a similar destination — the need for business to rediscover its reason for being beyond simply making money — but by very different routes. While Grant mourns the passing of manufacturing craft, Kay accepts its decline and looks to the power of ideas to shape the future.

If the book has a fault, it’s that it offers few easy solutions. Kay doesn’t lay out a blueprint for the future corporation. Instead, he calls for a change in mindset — one that sees the company not as a transactional bully (we need not follow the USA!), nor a “nexus of contracts,” but as a living system with multiple stakeholders — employees, customers, suppliers, communities — and yes, shareholders too. The goal? Not the maximisation of shareholder value, but the creation of great businesses that serve society and endure.

It’s an argument based on ‘un-common sense’, crisply delivered. And while Kay is unafraid to takedown of corporate icons like Jack Welch, this is not a bitter book. It’s measured, thoughtful and intellectually generous — the work of someone who wants business to do better, because it can.
Ultimately, The Corporation in the 21st Century is a book about realigning our ideas with reality. About recognising that power in the modern economy flows through people, not plant. That ideas, not assets, now drive value. And that the purpose of business — as ICI once understood — must be broader than a quarterly return.