From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Generally power is diffusing. New corporations such as Google and Facebook are also examples of power diffusing from nation states and moving to new forms of entities. Technology will only accelerate this trend.
There is no business without creativity. Creativity for me is the first condition to establish yourself as a leader in whatever you do in life.
We are unapologetically at the high-risk, low-return sweet-spot of agricultural finance. We choose to address geographies and sectors where there are real market failures or at least deep market imperfections.
In the end, what happened is I climbed Everest, I came back, and inadvertently I had transformed everyone that works at Arçelik literally from people who are working to earn money and live their lives, to people who are working to do their best they possibly could in terms of mitigating this climate crisis.
We can prove, with over 150 companies we've invested in – that you can simultaneously create value for the investor, and society. The reality is this- you can create value economically and socially in parallel – there isn't a contradiction.
This is a very tough question because the correlation between growth and returns on assets in China has been completely non-existent. You have had this tremendous growth, with fairly lame returns for equity investors!
Most people misunderstand what a negotiation is. In my experience, it's simply a conversation with a purpose. We tend to rush to problem-solving, eager to reach the solution, often leapfrogging several important steps. But to get the best possible deal for everyone, it starts with the right mindset.
What investors want the most is a team committed to a cause for the right reasons (passion about solving a problem, not passion about financial game), who can go and get people to buy into the vision, and who can build and manage teams.
If you start with a solution, there's a risk you might construct something that no one finds useful, leading to immense frustration. But when you centre your efforts on the problem, it serves as the guiding North Star of your journey.
The sacrifice is perhaps a decade- and it's a total sacrifice- you may not see your kids, you may miss an entire cycle of your lives, but you're doing it to provide for them in the future in a way you never could if you were an employee.
I went from knowing the value of a dollar to forgetting the difference between $10,000 and $30,000 because everything was expensive. I certainly I got hoodwinked sometimes: people would Google me and the business and charge me astronomical prices.
As the great baseball star Earl Weaver once said, 'Nobody likes to hear it, because it's dull, but the reason you win or lose is darn near always the same – pitching.'