S.L. Mintz, New York bureau chief of CFO Asia's sister publication, CFO , posed these questions and others to Hamel in the California office of Hamel's consulting firm, Strategos. A lot of what we've been doing in some very substantial companies is creating new mechanisms for resource attraction. There is a distinction between resource attraction and resource allocation. In most companies, one of the critical roles of the CFO is allocating resources across businesses, projects and so on. That process works pretty much like it worked in the old Soviet Union, in that somebody has an idea and you have to fight that idea up through levels of uncomprehending management.
Somebody throws out an idea, it gets considered by all sorts of sources of capital.
If the idea has merit, it attracts capital and talent. If it doesn't, it just dies. I sense a thinly veiled hostility to CFOs in Leading the Revolution. Then tell 'em to cut you some slack. You seem to be using CFOs as an emblem of people who aren't open to ideas.