From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I lived the change. My company was a way of, as they say, 'scratching my own itch.' I wanted to be able to go on working myself, and I realised that a lot of other women would have had comparable aims and desires.
The miracle of capitalism is that if you have a central government trying to solve something, it will come up with one averagely optimal solution for everybody. And capitalism will come up with 10 different solutions to the same problem.
We are seeing the emergence, development and evolution of entire monetary systems live, unfolding before our eyes. You have Bitcoin and Ethereum and can imagine them as international monetary systems that bring-together local ecosystems. We used to have gold as a key reserve asset, and now it's the US dollar.
In 2008 there was one company which applied for more patents than all the others put together, this company was IBM.
Incumbents are not doomed, and disruptors are not ordained. When we started our research, we thought that all these new Silicon Valley businesses were going to come in and destroy the incumbents. What we actually found was that a number of incumbents were doing things that really allowed them to respond and be ready for change.
Growing up in West Virginia, we were at the forefront economically— the chemical and coal mining center of the world. However, due to an inability to adapt to changing market dynamics and transitions, our position plummeted to the bottom ranks among the US states... I firmly advocate the idea of reinventing oneself every 5 years.
These are the kinds of digital services that have been technologically available for 25 years but just haven't been implemented anywhere. Basically, for scalability all you need is more servers.
My experience has shown me the importance of hiring problem solvers and builders, not just those who impose pre-established templates. The idea is not to forcefully superimpose their previous experience onto our company, but to adapt and innovate.
If one aspires to make a positive impact on the world, shouldn't we strive for innovative solutions, perhaps even for a disease as formidable as cancer?
What's the business hip hop of this post pandemic world? Who's going to be the Rapper's Delight of the post pandemic world?
We can only solve our ecological problems by linking ecology and economy. If we can create the right economic environment, change will happen. If it's more profitable to be efficient than wasteful, we will be efficient.
The potential for blockchain is to accelerate the digitization of financial markets. Blockchain gets everyone excited as it has the potential to convene these different parties together to reach the necessary agreements, in that sense it is a unique enabler, a coordination mechanism. That has massive implications on the structure of our financial markets.