When you're not in a geopolitical recession, political risk still matters, but it matters largely at a country level and primarily in emerging markets. But in a geopolitical recession, suddenly the biggest macro risks are by their nature political. And you focus less on growth and more on stability and resilience, and that's a problem because the free market model tells you 'don't focus on resilience and stability, focus first and foremost on growth and everything else will take care of itself'.

What really matters is how well you know yourself — because every aspect of your leadership is expressed through your personality. I think that single trait — self-awareness — or rather, that skillset, outweighs all the others put together.

Each time we get a bit of momentum in the economy, each time our exporters make up for the fact that domestic demand is flat.... we get knocked back by the Euro Zone.

People work for technical ability and wish for happiness. That's a mistake. You need to treat your happiness the way you treat all your skills - you need to work for your happiness - not just wish for it.

I think transparency in this sense is a red-herring. A multi-strategy hedge fund could give an investor or the SEC it's daily trade blotter and accomplish 'transparency,' and the recipient would have no idea what to make of the trades.

If you or I buy an organic veggie-burger, that's great, but we're swimming against billions in subsidies. These are changes which will require government action at the highest level, consumer action alone will not get us there.

One basis for society is that of helping your neighbour — but in the software world this is piracy. To prevent this, the U.S. is putting in place practices which are like those in the former Soviet Union — computerized guards, propaganda in favour of licensing, rewards for informing on co-workers, and penalties which make distributing software as serious a crime

Every failure has lessons it can give us- and knowing failure is possible and monitoring where you expect it to occur, allows you to divert your attention to the necessary observations and actions to carry out the positive.

Technology claims to be showing us a mirror of what was already present in society- racism, conspiracy theories- but in reality, technology is a funhouse mirror with a feedback loop that's engineered to show us the most egregious parts of society… those parts that are better at keeping our attention. The mirror gets more and more warped, but we mistake it for an honest and neutral view of who we are.

First and foremost was the consolidation of democracy. Second was the stabilisation of the economy. Thirdly- and probably most importantly- was the ability of Brazil to deal with a problem we inherited from colonial times- inequality.

It's not that capitalism is failing, but rather that the organisation of capitalism is succumbing to wealth and power. People with extraordinary power and wealth will organise and enforce markets in such a way that it benefits their wealth and adds to their power- it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy- a vicious cycle of more wealth and power.

Having attention as an entrepreneur is the ultimate business development tool, and business development is the backbone of any great business- it's important.