From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
It's so important to be curious, and to have young people around you. These sources of inspiration can help you modify your vision, take different approaches, and make better business decisions.
Basel III effectively means putting thicker gloves on this boxer, without fixing the fundamental problem (they cannot cope with unexpected punches, from a highly developed adversary- the economy).
In large organizations, a small group of leaders can hold the organization's capacity to change hostage to their own personal willingness to adapt and change – they are the gatekeepers – and even if they have the best will in the world, there simply will not be enough of them to deal with the complexity that we have in the environment around us.
In our market-economy, consumers have the power. I also believe that almost every consumer has an element of compassion in herself or himself.
Too often, organizations become like frogs in boiling water—gradually losing their competitiveness because everyone is afraid to take risks. The short-term pain of taking a risk seems more daunting than the long-term consequences, even though the long-term pain could be the loss of competitive advantage and, ultimately, the entire value of the enterprise.
At Axiom we've raised $64 million—we're a small startup—and we recently won the Putnam competition. We scored 90 out of 120, which would have placed us above all ~4,000 human contestants last year and at the level of a Putnam Fellow, meaning top five in the world. If you tried to achieve that purely through informal methods—where hallucination is a persistent risk—getting to the same level of consistent correctness would likely require a lot more resources.
The irony is that the more passive aggressive you are, the more your relationships will get damaged, much more so than if you were just honest. Passive aggression is infuriating when you're dealing with it. It can feel like shadowboxing!
A speculative bubble exists when the price of something does not equal its market fundamentals for some period of time for reasons other than random shocks. [Fundamental] is usually argued to be a long-run equilibrium consistent with a general equilibrium
If something goes wrong – as a leader, you take ownership – you cannot blame anyone else. If you are in charge of a team, you absolutely have to take ownership when something goes wrong, it's your fault.
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.
These markets will become a crucible for innovation and dynamic change. This will give more growth to derivative markets as we move forward.
Passion matters… It's rarely a straight-line to success, usually it's a roller-coaster.