Extractive summaries of and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Week 267 |October 21-27, 2022
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Shaping Section : Ideas and forces shaping economies and industries
India’s next green revolution
The Economist | October 20, 2022
If you care about the climate a crucial question is how emerging economies, which accounted for 67% of carbon-dioxide emissions from energy last year, can shift to a cleaner approach. They derive a third of their primary energy from coal, and must meet the aspirations of poor citizens who lack cheap electricity.
China offers one template: its energy industry is shifting towards renewables. Yet it is still moving far too slowly to reduce its emissions and many countries may be wary of replicating its state-led approach. An alternative model is now visible in the other Asian giant, India, which is in the early stages of a green boom led by the private sector. Although it has obvious flaws, it provides hope that India can make the green leap.
The big surprise is that major changes are happening on the ground. In the past decade India has seen a 50-fold increase in installed solar power. In 2021 its renewables accounted for 5% of its primary-energy consumption, and 5% of global renewable primary-energy consumption. Private firms have plans to invest perhaps $200bn in the coming years in everything from generation facilities to green hydrogen plants (by comparison, global investment in wind and solar last year was about $300bn, and India’s was roughly $15bn). The government wants to triple non-fossil-fuel capacity by 2030.
Behind the boom are a number of forces. One is the country’s underlying attributes: sun-drenched India has some of the cheapest solar power in the world, and the life-cycle cost of new plants is lower than for coal ones. The government has helped by introducing guarantee mechanisms so that firms forced to deal with rickety power distributors can still secure funding. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, views clean energy as a catalyst for an industrial boom based on cheap power, batteries and electric vehicles that may shift manufacturing supply chains away from China. Clean power will help cut a large import bill for fossil fuels and, by lowering pollution, save millions of lives. The final force is that India’s big local conglomerates (including Reliance Industries, Adani Group and Tata Group) are deploying capital at scale.
Yet for all its successes India’s surge faces several hurdles. One is financing. India will have to attract new sources of capital at a time when interest rates are rising. The biggest hurdle of all relates to government policy, which needs to be predictable enough to provide certainty to investors.
3 key takeaways from the article
- If you care about the climate a crucial question is how emerging economies, which accounted for 67% of carbon-dioxide emissions from energy last year, can shift to a cleaner approach. A state-run model offered by China. An alternative model is now visible in the other Asian giant, India, which is in the early stages of a green boom led by the private sector
- Forces behind the boom include: sun-drenched India, government guarantee mechanisms under this firms can secure funding, Narendra Modi vision to see clean energy as a catalyst for an industrial boom based on cheap power, batteries and electric vehicles that may shift manufacturing supply chains away from China and the final force is that India’s big local conglomerates.
- Although it has obvious flaws, it provides hope that India can make the green leap.
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Topics: Clean Energy, India, Global Economy, Manufacturing
America Is Unleashing Its Economic Arsenal
By Daniel Flatley | Bloomberg Businessweek | October 13, 2022
The US has the world’s strongest military and some of its most potent high-tech weapons, including stealth aircraft and precision rockets, but it’s increasingly leaning on targeted economic measures to achieve strategic goals. And the nation is no longer limiting its targets to relative minnows such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. Most of the countries that were being targeted by US sanctions were almost by definition not really huge participants in the global economy.
The Biden administration responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine not only by channeling arms and further aid to Kyiv but also by corralling allies to impose sanctions on Russia’s government. Against China, the US is exerting pressure on multiple fronts at a time when tensions over Taiwan are ratcheting up. This month’s announcement of new restrictions on China’s access to semiconductor technology was the latest in a series of moves aimed at the world’s second-largest economy.
Quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq—and, before those, Vietnam—serve as a reminder of the limits of military action. In sapping both resources and public support, those wars made other methods of power projection more appealing. The battle is being fought with particular intensity over computer chips. The Biden administration’s new restrictions aim to stymie Beijing’s push to develop its own industry and advance its military capabilities. The US economic statecraft toolkit has expanded to include export controls, foreign investment reviews, intellectual-property restrictions, and denial of access to key financial networks. Successive US administrations have also employed domestic industrial policy, tariffs, trade deals, and debt relief.
The ability to wield these weapons rests upon the preeminent role that the US plays in global commerce. It also controls the world’s foremost reserve currency and is more economically self-sufficient—and insulated—than most global peers. This economic arsenal complements the hard-power capability of the US, which it’s employed with mixed results in recent decades.
Economic warfare is also fraught with pitfalls. The US isn’t a command economy, and so the government has to rely on various carrots and sticks to make commercial actors do its bidding. Such measures aren’t without cost, and boxing in rivals could ultimately undermine peace and stability if handled poorly.
3 key takeaways from the article
- The US has the world’s strongest military but it’s increasingly leaning on targeted economic measures to achieve strategic goals. And the nation is no longer limiting its targets to relative minnows such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. Russia and China are the new targets.
- The US economic statecraft toolkit has expanded to include export controls, foreign investment reviews, intellectual-property restrictions, and denial of access to key financial networks. Successive US administrations have also employed domestic industrial policy, tariffs, trade deals, and debt relief.
- Economic warfare is also fraught with pitfalls. The US isn’t a command economy, and so the government has to rely on various carrots and sticks to make commercial actors do its bidding. Such measures aren’t without cost, and boxing in rivals could ultimately undermine peace and stability if handled poorly.
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Topics: Global Economy, International Politics, Economic Sanctions, Millitary
On the cusp of a new era?
By Chris Bradley| McKinsey Global Institute | October 20, 2022
The past two and a half years have been extraordinary. What we are seeing is surely more than the progression of just another business cycle. The unnerving combination of a global pandemic compounded by energy scarcity, rapid inflation, and geopolitical tensions boiling over has people wondering what certainties are left. Today’s events might even feel like a cluster of earthquakes that is reshaping our world. Are we now on the cusp of a new era presaged by today’s earthquakes?
What could that new era look like? The die is not yet cast. While there is a current direction of travel, there are also complex unresolved questions, which will determine how the situation plays out. To try to build a map for the new era, the authors looked at five domains under a suggested framework:
- In the world order, there is a tendency toward multipolarity, which in turn may imply realignment into regionally and ideologically aligned groups.
- Across technology platforms, the key drivers of the most recent era’s digitization and connectivity seem to be approaching saturation. Yet a set of already potent transversal technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and bioengineering, may combine to create another big surge of progress in the next era. At the same time, combined with the forces described, technology may move to the forefront of geopolitical competition and call into question the very meaning of being human.
- In demographic forces, a young world will evolve into an aging, urban world, the age of communicable diseases may give way to an age of noncommunicable diseases, and inequality within countries may increasingly challenge the social fabric.
- On resource and energy systems where recent underinvestment combined with geopolitical disruption has created real vulnerability. There is a strong desire to shift investment toward low-carbon energy, but total investment in all forms of energy appears to be struggling to keep pace with energy needs. Resilience, feasibility, and affordability concerns may challenge the velocity of the transition. Critical resources for the future economy are becoming economic and geopolitical pinch points.
- The long-term trend toward capital-deep and financialized economies. Economic growth rates appear to be normalizing. Growing leverage and credit may evolve into balance sheet stress. The OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] century will, on its current course and speed, give way to the Asian century.
3 key takeaways from the article
- Today’s events such as energy scarcity, rapid inflation, and geopolitical tensions might even feel like a cluster of earthquakes that are reshaping our world.
- A new paper from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests a framework to imagine the new era, drawn from a historical perspective of the structural tectonics that underpinned the world we have today and how they might play out in the next era. Five dimensions of the framework are used to explain the new era: multipolarity world order; saturation of digitization and connectivity and setting the stage for transversal technologies; aging and inequal population; vulnerabilities in energy shift; and growing leverage and credit may evolve into balance sheet stresses for OECD countries.
- Working out how to respond to the current moment and the path ahead is complex and requires boldness.
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Topics: Uncertainty, Global Economy, Globalization, Regionalization, Technology
How scientists want to make you young again
By Antonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review | October 25, 2022
A little over 15 years ago, scientists at Kyoto University in Japan made a remarkable discovery. When they added just four proteins to a skin cell and waited about two weeks, some of the cells underwent an unexpected and astounding transformation: they became young again. They turned into stem cells almost identical to the kind found in a days-old embryo, just beginning life’s journey. At least in a petri dish, researchers using a procedure that can take withered skin cells from a 101-year-old and rewind them so they act as if they’d never aged at all.
Now, after more than a decade of studying and tweaking so-called cellular reprogramming, a number of biotech companies and research labs say they have tantalizing hints the process could be the gateway to an unprecedented new technology for age reversal. By applying limited, controlled doses of the reprogramming proteins to lab animals, the scientists say, they are seeing evidence that the procedure makes the animals—or at least some of their organs—more youthful.
Richard Klausner is among the major supporter of the idea. He was pitching nothing less than “medical rejuvenation”—a means of taking old animals and making them “young.” He is the organizer and chief scientist of Altos Labs, a new research company seeded with more than $3 billion from ultra-wealthy figures in Silicon Valley and oil money from the Persian Gulf. Klausner and his financiers had swept up dozens of top scientists—offering salaries of $1 million and more—and set them to work on a technology the company now calls “rejuvenation programming.”
It seems to work at least in part by resetting what’s called the epigenome—chemical marks on DNA that control which genes are turned on, or off, in a cell. In aging, some of these markers get flipped to the wrong positions. Reprogramming is a technology that can flip them back. But it can also change cells in dangerous ways, even causing cancer.
The objective of Altos is to tame this phenomenon, understand it, and eventually apply it as a treatment to reverse a wide range of diseases. This may be possible, Klausner says, because youthful cells have more resilience and can bounce back from biological stress in ways old ones don’t. And Klausner has data to suggest it might already be working.
It’s this type of claim that raises so much skepticism. Critics see ballooning hype, runaway egos, and science that’s on uncertain ground. But the doubters this year were drowned out by the sound of stampeding investors.
3 key takeaways from the article
- A little over 15 years ago, scientists at Kyoto University in Japan made a remarkable discovery. When they added just four proteins to a skin cell and waited about two weeks, some of the cells underwent an unexpected and astounding transformation: they became young again.
- Now, after more than a decade of studying and tweaking so-called cellular reprogramming, a number of biotech companies and research labs say they have tantalizing hints the process could be the gateway to an unprecedented new technology for age reversal.
- It’s this type of claim that raises so much skepticism. Critics see ballooning hype, runaway egos, and science that’s on uncertain ground. But the doubters this year were drowned out by the sound of stampeding investors.
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Topics: Technology, Aging, Longevity, Medical Industry
Strategy & Business Model Section
To See the Way Forward, Look Back
By Ranjay Gulati | Harvard Business Review Magazine | November–December 2022 Issue
Most business leaders focus on the future much more than they do on the past. With industries and economies changing so rapidly, executives believe that their job is to embrace disruption and innovation, transform their organizations, and explore new frontiers—not maintain the status quo. Management experts encourage such views, often regarding the past as a hindrance to innovation. However, decades of research into companies around the world has taught the author that corporate history can be a strategic and motivational resource. Treated as a reference point for thought and action, it can actually drive progress in a way that provides continuity and offers stakeholders a sense of identity, pride, and responsibility as custodians of a legacy. Organizations that understand these benefits can look back at and pay homage to their histories even as they strive to move forward and beyond them. In studying leaders and companies that have accomplished this, the author has identified four steps that others can follow to do the same for their organizations.
- Uncover the Sacred in the Past. To use the past as a pathway to the future, leaders must first excavate the company’s early history, arriving at a deep understanding of how and why it came to be. As the organizational theorist Majken Schultz of Copenhagen Business School and colleagues suggest, that excavation can include various subprocesses, such as discovering key elements of the past, assessing or interpreting it in the new context of the present, and reclaiming it as “authentic” for use by the company. The goal is to grasp the very essence, or “soul,” of the organization as best one can—not just the founding ideals, ambitions, and purpose that animated stakeholders, but also the values that informed that early thinking and the principles or heuristics that drove day-to-day decision-making.
- Use It to Drive Future-Oriented Action. Once you’ve sifted through the past to determine what should be embraced or eschewed, the next step is to put that thinking into action by identifying areas where your organization might strategically extend or build on its history and other areas where it might profitably diverge and chart a different path. They must celebrate and collaborate around the good while acknowledging and moving on from the bad, rather than just trying to bury it.
- Unite Your Community. Religious and political leaders commonly draw on the past to align stakeholders with a new and improved vision, showing them the role they play in not just carrying on but also improving the traditions of an enduring moral community. Corporate executives can similarly present modern-day ambitions and plans as the continuation of a communal quest to realize the company’s founding ideals.
- Stay Connected. Maintaining a connection to the past in a way that inspires action and sustains a sense of legacy is an ongoing task. New events and an ever-changing context require periodic revisits to an organization’s history, and the best leaders treat those as opportunities to spark renewed dialogue with an eye to both refining their companies’ purpose and values and driving progress.
2 key takeaways from the article
- Companies would do well to look to their history as a way to propel them on a purpose-driven path forward.
- Four steps that organizations can follow to take their history as point of departure are: first, conduct a thorough historical audit, teasing out those elements from the past that should be held dear and crystallizing them into a purpose and values while simultaneously identifying what shouldn’t be retained or repeated. The second step is to translate the past into future-oriented action, using the purpose to inspire strategies, policies, and operational decisions that remain true to your company’s essence while positioning it for future success. The third is to galvanize the organization around those efforts by clarifying everyone’s role in maintaining or changing organizational history and legend. And the fourth is to sustain this progress by continually reexamining, reinterpreting, and deepening the company’s connection to its history.
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Topics: Strategy, Decision-making, Transition
Leading & Managing Section
Make Leader Character Your Competitive Edge
By Mary Crossan, William (Bill) Furlong, and Robert D. Austin | MIT Sloan Management Review | October 19, 2022
For all of the attention that leader character gets when we witness its negative extremes — such as when an authoritarian CEO presides over a corrupt or an abusive culture — most organizations give surprisingly little thought to what is actually one of the most significant available levers to effect positive organizational development. Organizations that fail to hire for and develop positive character among its leaders are missing an opportunity.
Leaders largely underestimate and misunderstand the concept of character. They marginalize it as just being about ethics rather than recognizing it as the foundation of all judgment and decision-making. They generally assess their own character as “good enough.” They believe it is a fixed trait rather than a quality that can be developed, and so they don’t see how individual strength of character can be embedded and scaled in their own organizations and cultures. Simply put, they don’t see that competence and character go hand in hand.
The authors, through their research, tried to forge a bridge between the research underpinnings associated with the character and the application of character in leadership practice,
This leads to a definition of leader character based on 10 separate dimensions that interact with an 11th, central quality of judgment. The ten characteristics are transcendence, drive, collaboration, humanity, humility, integrity, temperance, justice, accountability and courage.
Each dimension in this framework is a potential virtue. Consistent with Aristotle’s thinking, though, virtues become vices in either deficiency or excess. For example, leaders with too little courage are timid; those who take courage to an extreme become reckless. Every character behavior can operate as a vice in deficiency or excess.
Contrary to popular belief, individuals are not born with character, nor is it set in stone at an early age. Because the 62 elements associated with the 11 dimensions of character are virtuous habits that can be developed, the basic truth is that character can be strengthened, but it can also atrophy without conscious attention to its development. Nevertheless, as Aristotle said, one becomes virtuous only by acting virtuously. The authors’s research reveals that simply educating people by unpacking what character is and how it operates can often provide immediate course correction to individuals and organizations, and create the opportunity to activate dimensions of character that have been latent or underdeveloped.
3 key takeaways from the article
- Leaders largely underestimate and misunderstand the concept of character. They marginalize it as just being about ethics rather than recognizing it as the foundation of all judgment and decision-making.
- Leader character based on 10 separate dimensions that interact with an 11th, central quality of judgment. The ten characteristics are transcendence, drive, collaboration, humanity, humility, integrity, temperance, justice, accountability and courage. Each dimension in this framework is a potential virtue though, virtues become vices in either deficiency or excess.
- Contrary to popular belief, individuals are not born with character, nor is it set in stone at an early age. Character are virtuous habits that can be developed. For this start practicing, educate people, and create the opportunity to activate dimensions of character that have been latent or underdeveloped.
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Topics: Leadership, Virtues, Personality, Competitive Advantage
Entrepreneurship Section
How To Discover Your Personal Brand
By William Arruda | Forbes Magazine | October 27, 2022
Personal branding is essential to career success. The concept emerged around 25 years ago, and in that quarter century, it has evolved from a basic tool into a multifaceted mindset for living a fulfilling and authentic life—and for having a career that propels you to achieve your goals and fulfill your purpose.
Effective personal branding requires a lot of introspection. That’s because your brand is not created. It’s unearthed. Focused self-reflection is essential to uncovering the brand called YOU. But personal branding isn’t all introspection. In addition to looking inside yourself, you need to validate your thinking with feedback from others. That’s because your brand is held in the hearts and minds of those you seek to influence and impact. When it comes to the introspection half (which you should accomplish first), there are six drivers of your personal brand on which to focus:
- Values – your operating principles or non-negotiables. Your values are core to who you are, and they impact how you feel and behave.
- Passions – the things that bring you joy. Your passions give you energy. When you talk about them with others, you light up.
- Differentiators – those things that set you apart from others who have similar aspirations. Think of differentiators as your secret sauce. They help you make a unique mark on all that you do.
- Superpowers – the things you do better than anyone else. These signature strengths allow you to deliver exceptional value to stakeholders.
- Goals – what you want to achieve in your career. Goals can be short-term, midterm, or long-term. They help you focus on what’s important and ignore distractions.
- Purpose – your why. It’s not what you do or how you do it, it’s why you do it that’s foundational to your personal brand. Your purpose guides you and helps you feel fulfilled.
3 key takeaways from the article
- Personal branding is essential to career success. The concept emerged around 25 years ago, and in that quarter century, it has evolved from a basic tool into a multifaceted mindset for living a fulfilling and authentic life—and for having a career that propels you to achieve your goals and fulfill your purpose.
- Effective personal branding requires a lot of introspection and feedback from others to validate your thinking. That’s because your brand is held in the hearts and minds of those you seek to influence and impact.
- When it comes to the introspection half (which you should accomplish first), there are six drivers of your personal brand on which to focus: values, passions, superpowers, differentiators, purpose, and goals.
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Topics: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Personal Branding
8 Ways to Make a Professional Impression When Working From Home
By Young Entrepreneur Council | Inc Magazine | October 18, 2022
As more companies allow employees to work from home, it can be challenging to maintain the same sense of professionalism that may have come more naturally in a shared office setting. When you’re a leader, it’s important to consciously exude professionalism while working from home, especially if you’re highly visible on video calls throughout the day. Eight successful business leaders shared their best tips for ensuring you’re perceived as “professional,” even in the comfort of your home.
- Recreate your office workspace. Having a physical space dedicated to work can create a mental shift from the distractions of home life. So mimick a traditional office setup at home. Get a monitor, keyboard, mouse, a decent web camera, and noise-canceling headphones.
- Always dress professionally. One of the easiest ways to feel more professional at home starts with simply getting dressed in office attire rather than in pajamas or sweatpants. Full grooming will help you feel motivated to jump-start your day.
- Invest in noise-canceling headphones.
- Curate a professional background. Curating your background for video calls is important if you want to convey a professional appearance.
- Show you’re responsive and engaged. Leaders should make themselves available to answer questions, join meetings and engage with their teams throughout the day, especially if their company keeps regular business hours.
- Maintain dedicated work hours. If you have the flexibility to choose your schedule, dedicate a time slot for your work and stick to it.
- Set clear boundaries with family and friends. Family and friends who don’t work remotely may not understand that being home doesn’t necessarily mean you’re available to them. Set and enforce clear boundaries during the workday.
- Be aware of your triggers and distractions. Self-awareness of your triggers and distractions at home can help you avoid them when you’re trying to work. One way to increase self-awareness is to keep a journal. Take a few minutes to write down how you’re feeling and what you did during the day. This will help you track your time and identify any areas where you need to make changes.
3 key takeaways from the article
- As more companies allow employees to work from home, it can be challenging to maintain the same sense of professionalism that may have come more naturally in a shared office setting.
- When you’re a leader, it’s important to consciously exude professionalism while working from home, especially if you’re highly visible on video calls throughout the day.
- Eight tips for ensuring you’re perceived as “professional,” even in the comfort of your home are: recreate your office workspace, always dress professionally, curate a professional background, invest in noise-canceling headphones, show you’re responsive and engaged, maintain dedicated work hours, set clear boundaries with family and friends, and be aware of your triggers and distractions.
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Topics: Remote Working, Entrepreneurship
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