THE DISEASE "I-ITIS" AND THE "WANT THE WHOLE BAG" SYNDROME

I. The Diagnosis

There is a disease that appears in no medical textbook, yet causes more damage in every company, every institution, and every partnership than most of the ailments for which medicines are prescribed. One might call it I-itis — the chronic inflammation of the self.

The patient can be identified by a single symptom: he says "I" where "we" would be appropriate.

I developed that. I will build it. I made the decision. I am responsible for making it work. The I-itic does not merely stand at the centre — he is the centre. Everything that happens, happens through him, because of him, for him. The others — the engineers, the suppliers, the inventors, the workers, the co-thinkers — exist in his perception as minor characters. They are tools. Set dressing. Extras in a film whose leading role was always already cast.

The disease is insidious because it disguises itself as strength. In a culture that confuses "leadership" with "I," the I-itic is considered assertive. He is promoted. He is quoted. He receives the bonus. That beneath him the achievements of others vanish — not suppressed but absorbed, the way a black hole absorbs light — is noticed only when he is gone and it suddenly becomes visible who actually did the work.

II. The Syndrome

I-itis has a sister condition. One might call it the "Want the Whole Bag" syndrome. It frequently co-occurs, but not always. I-itis concerns recognition — who did it? The Whole Bag syndrome concerns the returns — who is entitled to how much?

Every child knows the moment: it receives something sweet, a handful of gummy bears, a piece of chocolate — and screams: More! All of it! Want the whole bag! It is the unbroken entitlement of the toddler who has not yet learned that the world does not consist solely of its own mouth.

Most children learn it. Eventually, through experience, through upbringing, through the simple observation that sharing brings joy and the whole bag brings a stomachache. It is not a heroic insight. It is the minimum of social maturity: others are hungry too.

But some never learn it. And of those who never learn it, a remarkable number end up in positions where they decide how returns are distributed.

You recognise them by their negotiating style. It is not about a fair share. It is about everything. The whole bag. The whole technology. The whole profit. The whole patent. The whole glory. And when you tell them that the inventor perhaps also deserves a share, or the partner, or the supplier, they look at you like a child from whom you are taking the bag: hurt, indignant, and unteachable.

III. The Anatomy

I-itis and the Whole Bag syndrome are not individual weaknesses. They are systemic patterns.

In business, the "I" is institutionalised. The CEO cult, the founder myth, the ranking of the most powerful managers — all reinforce the notion that value creation is a solitary act. Steve Jobs invented the iPhone. Elon Musk builds rockets. Jeff Bezos created e-commerce. The thousands of engineers, designers, logistics workers, and warehouse staff whose collective labour makes these products possible do not appear in the narrative. Not because someone actively suppresses them, but because the narrative itself has a grammar that knows only singulars.

In science, the same mechanism operates. The "first author" is cited. The professor is invited. The name on the patent is the name of the institute director, not the doctoral student who spent three years in the laboratory. Science calls this the "Matthew Effect" — after the evangelist, not the sociologist Robert K. Merton who coined the term: "For unto every one that hath shall be given." Those who already have reputation receive more. Those who have none lose even the little that is owed to them.

In partnerships — commercial, technological, creative — I-itis manifests as appropriation. One brings the idea, another the capital, a third the network. At the beginning, there is talk of "we." After the first success, the "I" creeps in. And when it comes to a dispute, it turns out that one of them thought all along that the whole bag was his due. The idea? Anyone could have had it. The capital? Could have been found elsewhere. The network? Everyone has contacts. Only he, only his contribution, only his share — that is irreplaceable.

IV. The Inventor and His Counterpart

There is one relationship in which I-itis has a particularly devastating effect: the relationship between the inventor and the person who commercialises his invention.

The inventor has created something that did not exist before. He has invested years, often decades. He has borne the risks, suffered the setbacks, endured the sleepless nights. And then someone comes along — a licensee, a partner, a managing director — who takes over the invention and after six months says: I will build it. I will market it. I know what needs to be done.

The "I" in that sentence is not merely grammatically wrong. It is an act of appropriation. It erases the prehistory. It declares one's own involvement the origin and the inventor's contribution the preliminary work — useful, but superseded. It says: the idea is now mine. The whole bag.

The inventor stands beside him and no longer understands the world. Not because he is naive — but because he comes from a different logic. Whoever invents something knows how vast the gap is between the idea and the moment it works. He knows that every invention rests on a thousand failed attempts. He knows that he could not have done it alone — that it took the workshop foreman who built the prototype, the professor who validated the theory, the partner who dared the first application.

The inventor knows that it is always "we." That is why it hits him so hard when someone says "I."

V. Why Sharing Is Not Weakness

There is a sentence heard in every negotiation seminar that is as wrong as almost any other: "Negotiation is a zero-sum game. What one side wins, the other loses."

That is true for a cake. It is not true for a bakery.

When two people share a cake, each has half. That is arithmetic. But when two people run a bakery together, the result is not half a cake for each but a hundred cakes for both. Whoever shares does not lose a cake — he gains a partner. And a partner who is treated fairly bakes more than an employee who feels cheated.

This is not social romanticism. It is business experience, confirmed by every cooperative that works, every franchise system that grows, and every partnership that outlasts the first quarrel.

The cooperative movement — from Rochdale through Raiffeisen to Mondragón — is founded on a single insight: that shared returns yield more than hoarded ones. Not from altruism, but from intelligence. When the farmer, the craftsman, the worker receives a fair share, he invests, he stays, he thinks along. When he receives nothing, he takes what he can get — or he leaves.

I-itis destroys precisely this mechanism. Whoever claims everything for himself ends up with less than he would have had if he had shared. But he does not grasp it, because he never thinks beyond the next bag.

VI. The Mother and the Insight

There is a moment in childhood that decides everything. It is the moment when someone — a mother, a father, a grandmother, an older sibling — says to the child: No. Not the whole bag. Give your sister some too.

And then something remarkable happens: the child gives. Reluctantly, perhaps. Under protest, certainly. But it gives. And it sees the sister's delight. And in that moment — in that small, everyday, entirely unheroic moment — the child learns something that is taught in no business school: that sharing brings joy. Not abstractly, not theoretically, not as a moral principle, but as a bodily experience: the other's delight feels good.

Whoever has lived that moment and remembers it builds differently. Negotiates differently. Treats partners differently. Not because he is a better person, but because he has had an experience that has taken from him the fear of sharing.

And whoever has never lived that moment — or has forgotten it — builds structures based on appropriation. He holds on, clings, defends. He says "I" and means "everything." He wants the whole bag and wonders why, in the end, no one wants to share with him anymore.

VII. The Antidote

It would be nice if curing I-itis were a matter of goodwill. If one only had to remind the patient that others also exist. But I-itis is stubborn, because everything confirms it: the corporate culture, the legal system, the media, language itself.

The antidote is therefore not morality but structure.

One builds systems in which sharing does not depend on the goodwill of the individual but is embedded in the architecture. Cooperatives do this. Foundations do this. Licensing systems do this, when they are fairly designed: the inventor retains his knowledge, the licensee uses it, both profit, and the structure prevents either from taking the whole bag from the other.

This is not idealism. It is engineering. One does not design against human nature — one designs for it. One builds guardrails, not because all drivers are drunk, but because even sober drivers sometimes misjudge the curve.

The best partnerships I have observed are not those in which all participants were saints. They are those in which the structure was built so that I-itis found no fertile ground. In which it was clear who owned what, who had contributed what, and how the returns would be distributed. Not because there was no trust, but because there was enough trust to agree on the rules beforehand.

VIII. The Whole Bag and the Empty Bag

There is an irony in the history of I-itis that its patients never understand.

Whoever wants the whole bag often ends up with the empty bag.

For the partner who is begrudged his share leaves. The inventor whose contribution is appropriated terminates the contract. The employee whose achievements are claimed as another's switches to the competition. The cooperative that was exploited founds its own company. In the end, the I-itic sits alone in his office, with all the titles, all the claims, all the patents — and no one left to do the work.

The whole bag is still there. But it is empty.

This is not a morality tale. It is empirical observation. Anyone who has been in business long enough knows the cases: the founder who drove out all the co-founders and in the end fails alone. The corporation that squeezed every supplier to the last penny and then finds no one willing to deliver. The managing director who claimed another's invention as his own and five years later faces an empty desk, because the inventor has left and taken his knowledge with him.

I-itis is not merely unjust. It is stupid. It destroys precisely what it desires.

IX. The Only Lesson

My mother, one might have said, was no economist. She had no theory of sharing. She had something better: the experience that a child who shares is happier than a child who screams. And she had the courage to say "No" when the child wanted the whole bag.

This lesson — that sharing is not the loss but the beginning — is so simple that you can explain it to a two-year-old. And so difficult that board chairmen cannot grasp it.

There is no pill for I-itis. There is only an experience that one has either had or not: the moment when you give and see that the joy grows larger, not smaller.

Whoever knows that moment builds partnerships. Whoever does not builds empires.

Empires crumble. Partnerships endure.

That is in no textbook. But it is true nonetheless.