From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Systems change is slow because it requires consensus that there is a system failure to start with, as well as the presence of a viable alternative. This requires a combination of culture shift, behavioral change, and structural change to ultimately change the rules of the game.
Your corporate's social responsibility is to win. You cannot be generous from an empty wagon! This nonsense about giving when you're broke is ridiculous. Corporate responsibility, first and foremost, is to win. You can then take those resources from winning and allocate them as you see fit. That's not a popular statement, but it's the truth!
China for example, aims to increase their buying by 400,000 barrels a day in the last quarter of 2012, and will be adding over 750,000 barrels of new refining capacity. That economic engine is still turning, but what people want is to be able to price that trade-flow.
While most people are uncomfortable with change we have a business built on analysing it. Our business takes advantage of challenges and the opportunities they provide.
Research has shown that when you compare the effect of a 1% change in unemployment rate and 1% change in the inflation rate; a 1% increase in unemployment has a bigger impact on people's happiness than a 1% increase in inflation.
If you're going to be a city of love and compassion, you're going to have to develop economics infrastructure, capital planning and job creation policies, complementing them with education.
We are facing the mother of all debt crises. When you look at the data on private and public debt, the debt to GDP ratio was near 200% of global GDP in 1999, today it's more like 350% and rising. In advanced economies, it's over 420% and in China, 330% and rising.
Our philosophy has been about trying to control the entire customer experience. A lot of people, when they think about branding, they think about advertising and marketing. But we actually don't do any advertising or marketing. Instead, we invest all of that money into the customer experience, and then our customers do our marketing for us through word of mouth.
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.
I think the 2008-2011 era has demonstrated that there are major problems with the structure and governance of the EMU and there is need for considerable change, probably more fiscal and political union, of which a common Euro denominated bond will be part of.
If you're not careful, possessions can end up owning you. Eventually, the car became part of my identity; it represented who I was, which isn't healthy. I want everyone to become wealthy and experience this firsthand because once they do, they'll realize material possessions aren't fulfilling.
The defining feature of our era is that the next generation are bona fide digital natives. They've been raised in a digital world, so concepts like artificial intelligence or quantum computing don't faze them. They're backed by technology, making them tech-empowered. This is the first aspect. They're equipped both to decide how capital is utilized and to research if it aligns with their values.