Wisdom in fragments

For the iPad it's game over in terms of market-share… Apple has won! It's a preposterously cheap stock… The applications for the iPhone and the iPad are just growing every day. I think these things are going to be ubiquitous…

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I think Apple is preposterously undervalued. Apple has this mind-boggling margin structure, phenomenal consumer brand, and is accumulating mountains of cash. I joked on television that they should lever up and buy Greece! They have something like 7x cash-flow.

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I think Groupon was preposterously overpriced, and Zynga was moderately overpriced. The principal problem with Groupon, in my opinion, is that they have a bad business model. It basically eats by selling their customers crack cocaine- telling them to cut their prices 50% for a selected number of people. If you do that enough? You wont have a business.

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My big contention is that we've misread Adam Smith. People don't realise that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher before an economics expert. His first book, before he wrote 'The Wealth of Nations' was, 'The Theory on Moral Sentiments'. In that book, you find the answer for what the invisible hand really is! He never accelerated the narrative that there should be completely unfettered free markets. He believed markets took place in the context of a moral framework and foundation.

I've worked with many entrepreneurs and billionaires and I see the same trend over and over again. What they want is someone to manage the liquid side of their portfolio, and they want to take a huge chunk out and use it as their risk capital on things they know and can control. The money didn't just drop-in… it arrived through creation and building! These individuals are always going to be about growth….

The Chinese government has realised that to fuel capitalism, an atheistic, communistic, civil-religion will never propel growth. They weren't doing because they thought it was 'true' but because they were astute in knowing that you need this kind-of cultural base. Recently the Chinese government have done a major funding push for Buddhist centres and institutes around the world. They are trying to replace one philosophical narrative with another… They realise that their system, frankly, will not support the growth or creativity to create the new technologies and companies that are necessary.

If you look historically at the historical contours of wealth- it's primarily created through private ownership. That's always been the case- and I believe it always be. Having said that…. the lines begin to get blurred when you start to look at places like Latin America and Mexico where the state-owned enterprises are dominated by individuals- like a Carlos Slim, for example…. or if you look at state-owned assets being privatised in a place like Russia where former KGB agents are now industrial capitalists.

There was some fascinating research in Judaism which showed that as an individual moved from being orthodox, to conservative and eventually liberal.. there was a steep rise in the prevalence of drug use and drunkenness in society. It's not because the Jewish faith, at an orthodox level, derides drugs or drinking- but more that it derides letting yourself down publically.

Pioneering addiction medicine researcher and founder of addiction studies field

In 19th century England, there was no law against opium use until something like the 1890's. It was freely available, people didn't talk about addiction but rather about 'bad use of opium'... Charles Dickens used to use it extensively! It wasn't always banned!

Pioneering addiction medicine researcher and founder of addiction studies field

The evidence is that 50% of young heroin users who are under 19 will die by the age of 50. It's a terrible danger. People with alcohol problems have got a full 400% increase in expectation of death, than people without alcohol problems.

Pioneering addiction medicine researcher and founder of addiction studies field

There's a very strong relationship between depravation and drug use in many western cultures. It's not the sole reason- you do get the rich and mega-privileged using drugs... You can't go shouting from the rooftops that it's all about depravation... a lot of it is... but there are other social factors, personal factors, genetic factors and economic factors – all mixed into the pot.

Pioneering addiction medicine researcher and founder of addiction studies field

What's special about it as a science subject is that it is so awkward, it doesn't lend itself to easy solutions. It's a multi-factorial problem, very different to- for example- the question of what causes influenza?

Pioneering addiction medicine researcher and founder of addiction studies field

That's the reason why I tend to say that B2B brand stands for "Boring to Boring" branding. Today, people fundamentally believe that business to business branding has to be incredibly serious… My view is that you should infuse a little bit of emotion into it.

Leading Brand Expert, Author & Neuromarketing Researcher

The reality is that you are looking at your private emails and Facebook and so on at work, and at home you will look at your work emails. We split our private life and work life in a different way than we did in the past. Now, these areas of our lives are totally mixed together.

Leading Brand Expert, Author & Neuromarketing Researcher

The brand must not only convince prospective customers and draw them to the brand but also be deeply believed in by the employees and other stakeholders of the company. We say that for the brand to work, employees must live the brand promise.

Father of Modern Marketing & Prolific Management Author

A brand is really an emotional connection you have with a product or service. It's so emotional in fact that you become fairly irrational in the way you try to justify why you're using it. If you split our brain into a rational and irrational side…. a brand is what is operating at the irrational side.

Leading Brand Expert, Author & Neuromarketing Researcher