Geoff Colvin is editor-at-large of Fortune magazine, a position that gives him access to some of the leading boardrooms of the United States and time to ruminate about what he finds there. If his latest book has one major flaw, it is that it is written purely through a US lens and readers will need to judge for themselves whether the trends he finds are universally applicable. Nonetheless, his research throws up some interesting food for thought.

Colvin says the current recession represents much more than the usual cyclical downturn and is changing the economic landscape fundamentally. The US economy is becoming less consumer driven and consumer focused; social attitudes towards working, saving, spending and borrowing are shifting; investors will remain spooked for a long time and Government will play an increasing role. And he does at least acknowledge that the world economy is becoming less US- centric.

Some businesses, he says, will emerge from this downturn stronger and more dominant than when they started while others will weaken and ultimately fail. It all depends on the choices that they make now. While the future may be hard to see, there are lessons in history.

In the Great Depression when US unemployment reached 25 per cent, Colvin notes that there was a boom in radio listenership. Social workers found that Americans who needed to raise money to pay the rent would sell their fridges, bathtubs, telephones and beds before they would part with their radios. The effects of this were transformative for radio set manufacturers, station owners, broadcast artists, ad agencies and advertisers.

During the two most recent recessions (1990 and 2001) US consumers cut their spending on food outside the home. While there was no surprise there, they also cut consumption of tobacco products, despite the addictive nature of those items and on leisure activities. They increased expenditure on healthcare and pension plans and invested strongly in improving their education.

Being attuned to these trends is the key, but Colvin says some companies fail even to see what appears obvious. The current recession, for example, favours netbook producers producing cheap functional computers, so companies such as Acer and Asus are stealing a march on Dell and HP, who have yet to wake up to the trend. History may be repeating itself here.