From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
When you look at the numbers, over half the sub-Saharan African population is under 18 years old, versus Latin America, where over half the population is under 25 years old and Asia, where it is under 35 years old. In short, these EM populations are young, expansive and dynamic, not like the stable, more risk-averse populations of the world's developed economies.
Many entrepreneurs are deluded about their odds of success, that evidence is very clear. This creates problems… Should a government subsidise entrepreneurs who greatly over-estimate their chances of success?
The biggest opportunities relates to the branded companies who are excellent at exploring opportunities in the BRIC and N-11 world, especially those with a consumer brand that is difficult to replicate and compete with, for example German cars, Louis Vuitton.
The standard models were formulated through a process that started well before computers were in place, and I would say it's undergone a certain lock-in. Once you start going down that path, it's hard to break out of it to another path. As a result, economics is stuck. It's not even that the existing models are wrong, they're just very limited in what they can do, and mainstream economists have gotten very locked in to using those models – and only those models.
Sovereign debt is reasonably unique in that there are no underlying assets one can claim unlike corporate bonds.
If somebody told me the US stock market returned 12% per annum over the last 50 years, I would simply ask them what the returns were over the last 150 years, 250 years, 10 years and so on. I could make up any return I want just by picking the appropriate time period.
In a society where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means. The more money can buy, the more affluence (or the lack of it) matters.
I've been doing this a long time and have very rarely seen a company with sustainable competitive advantage like Amazon has.
One of the sources of overconfidence in our ability to forecast the future is the great ease with which we find explanations for the past. That's a very significant mechanism that produces overconfidence.
Western societies have to heed the strategies of the east where innovation and progress are fundamental parts of their attitudes to business. Japanese carmakers built their sustainability from their constant ability to innovate rather than being cheaper.
Every nation is dependent on every other to shore up the system, and there are few (if any) instances where a country is fully shielded against the default of another.
What was broken in journalism was not a lack of demand for good stories nor a lack of journalists or the format of stories and distribution – the thing that was broken was the business model.