Disruptive Leadership

A societal imbalance

438 million people in China will be 60 or older by 2050, leaving just 1.6 working-age adults for each elder. (Couples in Shanghai can now have a second child. )

America’s education paradox

Americans rank 15th to 25th in math, reading, science and problem solving,  but are #4 in % of higher-education degrees earned.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Countries with lower “social dysfunction” (e.g. based on lower rates of homicide, teen pregnancy, unemployment, poverty, etc.) tend to be more secular.   Those that have higher rates of “dysfunction,” such as Portugal and the United States, are more religious (as measured by self-professed belief, church attendance, etc.)

Democracy isn’t always good for your health.

Paul Collier, author of “The Bottom Billion,” ran studies on post-conflict societies to learn what factors lead to peace.  While the risk of violence decreases during an election year, it doubles the following year from 5 to 10%.

Source: A set of “interesting” tidbits from the August 24th, 2009 airline lounge copy of Newsweek I read while waiting for my return flight from Shanghai to San Francisco.

Wired recently hosted a conference called “Disruptive by Design,” the first conference that I know of focused mostly on disruptive business models.  In talking about Disruptive Leadership, I have often emphasize that a disruptive business model must accompany the disruptive innovation, especially when addressing the bottom of the pyramid.  CK Pralahad talks in detail about this in the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

One of the featured speakers was Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.  Given the success of Amazon’s Kindle and its impact to the “business model” of the publishing industry, that was the primary topic of discussion.  You can watch Jeff’s entire talk on Wire’d conference site (as well all the other speakers).

So what does this have to do with “next billion?” The device is expensive at ~$400 — far out of reach of most.  Amazon’s online store is primarily a mature market phenomenon.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Fareed Zakaria has been a favorite of mine for years. Editor of Newseek International since 2000, he seems to blast through media bias and provides an unusually independent and insightful interpretation of foreign policy and events.

He wrote a great assessment of America’s future position in the world in The Post-American World, and has a Sunday show called GPS on CNN, which is excellent.

He recently landed an exclusive interview with the premier of China, Wen Jiabao.   The Chinese premier has been dubbed “the people’s premier” by both domestic and foreign media due to his populist and “common man” approach.

Fareed asks very tough questions in a very tactful way (you’ll note the premier’s chin twitch a bit on Zakaria’s question on Tiananman Square, but Wen Jiabao’s answer is still thoughtful). Not surprisingly, this interview was nominated for an Emmy.  A must-see video.

… that China GDP grew 7.9% in the 2nd quarter of 2009 vs the previous year, and grew a staggering 16.5% compared to the previous quarter. Car sales rose by 48% and home purchases increased by 80%.   The Economist argues that this is due to both the government’s economic stimulus program as well as belt tightening measures the government put into place the year before:

“In 2007, concerns about overheating prompted the government to curb the flow of credit … This caused China’s economy to slow sharply even before the financial crisis.  Then, last November, the government turned the credit tap back on full.”

I met with the head of a large PC company in China last November and told me he believed China’s domestic market would not suffer as much from the financial crisis due to its government’s efforts.  Apparently he was right.  The government controls the banks and much of the economy and knows how to make their consumers buy (nothing get’s a Chinese consumer to part with their money more than “special” sales, rebates and discounts).

The danger is that they create unsustainable demand, potential bubbles in some segments (e.g. housing), and a repeat of what happened in the US mortgage industry  with too many “bad” loans.

“Did you know …” posts are short factoids or trends related to disruptive leadership (see the list of potential topics in the list of categories to the right.)

Recently, I came across an article in the NY Times about Jeff Bezos’ speech at a conference about disruptive business models.

I googled the article and found that Wired magazine hosted a conference called “Disruptive by Design,” the first conference that I know of focused specifically on disruptive business models.  They have a video library of all of the speakers.

Two stood out.  The first was Wired’s editor-in-chief, Christopher Anderson, who is more famously known as the author of Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.   He has introduced a new book: Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which was the primary topic of his speech. (You can get the e-book and audiobook free here.) He suggests that as things go from bricks to bits, and with the internet as a frictionless marketplace, you get perfect competition where prices fall to equal the marginal cost of a product.  Since the marginal cost of “bit-based” products (e.g. software) is nearly zero, he suggests that that they may eventually be free.  Using Google to search is free.  You can get free operating systems (e.g. Ubuntu).  And so on.  But he is not suggesting that this is a world of no profits. [Read the rest of this entry...]