From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
If you want to rebalance, you have to understand that you must rebalance from construction and finance into something else. But what? It's very hard to see where any sustainable growth can come from.
I define disruption as being where the incumbent players and incumbents somehow deny what their customers are saying or want differently. A disruptor comes in, sees a problem more clearly, and in some cases has more freedom to attack the problem.
So, without thinking it through, I got a tourist visa and flew to Moscow. I didn't consider the repercussions or how risky it could be—I just did it. If Stein could go to Moscow, so could I. Others had gone there, and I knew tourists were allowed. So I went as a tourist, and we'd figure things out from there.
The reality is, not every business model is designed for scalability. Some businesses don't necessarily need to scale to be successful. The key lies in intellectual property. Once you've developed a piece of IP, the cost of distributing it to one person versus a million is remarkably similar.
These new regulations should (in theory, although there is no research to test it) prevent this psychological risk aversion by ensuring that all counterparties know that at a wholesale and institutional level, they are safe.
The diversity of strategies people use is truly remarkable, I saw people using completely different strategies to the degree that if I had set out to invent 15 different strategies for a fictional work…. I couldn't have made the strategies more different to the ones I saw in real life! This illustrates a point I have made in all my works insofar as there really is no 'holy grail' or single style that is most effective.
The factory isn't something to hide away or outsource to the cheapest option. It's something to cherish, to be proud of. We can be trendy, we can be a brand, but it means nothing if the product that goes out the door isn't exceptional.
The only real competitive advantage that's durable is cost and innovation – as long as innovation happens along the trajectory that takes into account stakeholders, not just shareholders.
Speed and pace are important – the circumstances that brought people to the table can change over time, nothing is forever, nothing is static.
Just before my father passed away, the company had grown considerably. He said to me, 'I have six children, and who would have believed that you, Frederik, out of all my children would have been the one that succeeded!' I'm not sure that was a compliment!
Taoism speaks to the interconnectedness of the universe, and how everything and everyone has an impact on everything and everyone. Governance must widen its' perspectives to think about the implications, and ramifications, of business in society.
My fun statement is that if I see the same thing, three times in one week, from disparate news or information sources, I have to move quickly as it's a trend that's likely to happen.