Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

A technology tussle between the two superpowers is never far away. This week the Wall Street Journal reported a breach of American telecoms networks by a Chinese hacking group known as “Salt Typhoon”, which was seemingly intended to glean knowledge about American wiretapping activities. In both countries, deep mistrust has led to a policy of shunning the other’s digital infrastructure. Uncle Sam bars Huawei, a Chinese firm, from installing its telecoms kit in America; China discourages the sale of Silicon Valley’s servers and cloud-computing products within its borders.

Yet in much of the world American and Chinese infrastructure—the data centres, undersea cables and wires that underpin the internet—sit side by side, as the two countries compete for market share, profits and geopolitical clout. The fiercest contest is in Asia. There the presence of Chinese digital-infrastructure firms is already substantial. Some 18% of all new subsea cables worldwide in the past four years have been built by a single mainland firm, many criss-crossing Asia. Alibaba’s cloud operation is active in nine Asian countries and Huawei has built many mobile networks.

China’s success partly reflects a government plan. Its Digital Silk Road strategy, a branch of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative, aims to dominate the region’s internet plumbing. It helps, too, that Chinese firms are innovative and cheaper than American ones, though some are aided by hidden subsidies from the government. By one estimate Chinese cloud services cost 40% less than American-run ones.

If China came to dominate Asia’s digital infrastructure, the consequences would be profound. Its ruling Communist Party wants to set the norms that govern data and the internet. China’s pull within the world’s technical standard-setting bodies has grown and it has promoted a vision of “data sovereignty”, under which governments control information and make sure it is stored locally, so nothing can escape the state’s grasp.

When mobile-telecoms networks were being built in the 2000s, two Chinese firms, Huawei and zte, soundly defeated their American and European rivals in Asia. But that does not mean Chinese firms will necessarily win the battle to supply the next generation of digital infrastructure. The investment cycle has barely started. Tech firms will be investing tens of billions of dollars annually in data centres in Asia for years to come. And the picture is far from uniform. One study finds that China dominates cloud-computing hubs in five of 12 Asian countries, America leads in five and they are neck and neck in two. Some countries, including India, have recently grown warier of the security risk posed by Chinese firms.

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

In 2023, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, an estimated 733 million people around the world were “undernourished,” meaning they lacked sufficient food to “maintain a normal, active, and healthy life.” After falling steadily for decades, the prevalence of global hunger is now on the rise—nowhere more so than in sub-Saharan Africa, where conflicts, economic fallout from the covid-19 pandemic, and extreme weather events linked to climate change pushed the share of the population considered undernourished from 18% in 2015 to 23% in 2023. The FAO estimates that 63% of people in the region are “food insecure”—not necessarily undernourished but unable to consistently eat filling, nutritious meals.

In Africa, like anywhere, hunger is driven by many interwoven factors, not all of which are a consequence of farming practices. Increasingly, though, policymakers on the continent are casting a critical eye toward the types of crops in farmers’ plots, especially the globally dominant and climate-vulnerable grains like rice, wheat, and above all, maize. Africa’s indigenous crops are often more nutritious and better suited to the hot and dry conditions that are becoming more prevalent, yet many have been neglected by science, which means they tend to be more vulnerable to diseases and pests and yield well below their theoretical potential. Some refer to them as “orphan crops” because of this. 

Efforts to develop new varieties of many of these crops, by breeding for desired traits, have been in the works for decades—through state-backed institutions, a continent-wide research consortium, and underfunded scientists’ tinkering with hand-pollinated crosses. Now those endeavors have gotten a major boost: In 2023, the US Department of State, in partnership with the African Union, the FAO, and several global agriculture institutions, launched the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils, or VACS, a new Africa-focused initiative that seeks to accelerate research and development for traditional crops and help revive the region’s long-­depleted soils. VACS, which had received funding pledges worth $200 million as of August, marks an important turning point, its proponents say—not only because it’s pumping an unprecedented flow of money into foods that have long been disregarded but because it’s being driven by the US government, which has often promoted farming policies around the world that have helped entrench maize and other food commodities at the expense of local crop diversity.

It may be too soon to call VACS a true paradigm shift: Maize is likely to remain central to many governments’ farming policies, and the coordinated crop R&D the program seeks to hasten is only getting started. Many of the crops it aims to promote could be difficult to integrate into commercial supply chains and market to growing urban populations, which may be hesitant to start eating like their ancestors. Some worry that crops farmed without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides today will be “improved” in a way that makes farmers more dependent on these chemicals—in turn, raising farm expenses and eroding soil fertility in the long run. Yet for many of the policymakers, scientists, and farmers who’ve been championing crop diversity for decades, this high-level attention is welcome and long overdue.

Now the question is whether researchers, governments, and farmers can work together in a way that gets these crops onto plates and provides Africans from all walks of life with the energy and nutrition that they need to thrive, whatever climate change throws their way.

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

What will it take for the consumer goods industry to turn its fortunes around? Once a leader in total shareholder returns (TSR), the industry has fallen from the top to the bottom quartile in TSR performance.  Four megatrends that have led to this reshaping of the P&L [profit and loss] are:

1. Overall macroeconomic has slowdown. Population growth has been stagnating, and wealth expansion is slowing in both developed and developing markets. Developing markets are critical here because they have been 70 percent of the growth of the overall CPG industry over the past couple of decades.
2. Consumer fragmentation, driven mostly by the shift to digital. At this point, 75 percent of all advertising spend is digital, which is a sea change for the mass-market brand-building model that CPGs used to use. While many have been doing a lot to change and evolve their models, they haven’t done as much as some other industries have, so CPG is behind in its use of digital channels. That makes it harder for them to get their brands in front of consumers.
3. Mass-merchant squeeze. Supermarkets have been the most important trading partner for most consumer goods players for a long time, but overall they have been losing share.  This has resulted in supermarkets struggling with their own profitability, which has made them tougher trading partners. They’re pushing down prices, becoming tougher negotiators, using more buying alliances, and investing in private label quality and promotion.
4. The issue of escalating and volatile costs. We’re clearly still in an inflationary period; it’s lessening but not reversing. And we have ongoing rates of crop failure and other sources of cost driven by climate change. It is expected that costs will remain elevated above 2019 levels for some time.

How should companies stay abreast of the evolution of these megatrends? It calls for action on six topics.

The first is portfolio reshaping, which is about getting more exposed to high-growth categories and geographies through resource allocation, and also how you use M&A and divestments to refresh your portfolio. Leaders need to reallocate 5 percent of their resources each year for this reshaping.  A second benchmark is to have 20 to 30 percent of your revenue coming from new sources—new categories or geographies—every decade.

That brings us to Agenda 2: performance. The first topic here is “truly scaling commercial excellence,” and the benchmark is to be taking share in 80 percent or more of your revenue. The next topic is “the marketing revolution.” We are all talking about the ways in which generative AI [gen AI] can empower marketers to drive more relevant marketing and a much greater level of personalization so that digital is at least 75 percent of their marketing spend and half their digital marketing spend is gen AI-assisted.

The next topic is “owning the premiumization and category expansion in your categories”—having two times your fair share when it comes to the premium segment in your categories and new category growth. And the final topic is “reinventing productivity.” All players need to be thinking about their next 250 basis points of cost reduction, which is going to require more automation and more demand management than in the past, because a lot of the more obvious levers have already been pulled.

It’s useful for executive teams to assess where they are today: “Compared to this benchmark, where would you say you stand today? Which of these would move the needle the most for you?” We are not saying that, to lead, a CPG needs to excel at all of these topics. Instead, it needs to make good progress, be in good shape, and then it needs to pick a few where it’s really going to stand out in front.

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

Taking a stance on social issues doesn’t have to antagonize a large swath of your customer base, however. That’s the conclusion that Kim Whitler, an associate professor at the Darden School of Business, and Thomas Barta, the dean of the Marketing Leadership Masterclass, came to after interviewing hundreds of executives, C-level leaders, and board members about corporate activism.

Many scholars have been looking at how a firm’s political positions can affect its relationship with a broad spectrum of stakeholders, but Whitler and Barta have zeroed in on one question: How should companies assess the threat of a negative reaction among consumers? 

Whitler and Barta advise brands to focus on two factors: consumer agreement (how unifying or polarizing the social issue involved is) and positional alignment (how well a stance fits with a firm’s mission and values). Before making a public statement or launching a campaign, executives should analyze data on those variables—which can be gathered from surveys, focus groups, and social media posts—to estimate market share risk. The more divisive an issue is, and the further afield a stand is from a firm’s image, the bigger the risk.  The researchers don’t recommend that brands always soften their stances or that they avoid activism altogether. Instead, they offer four guidelines:

1. Your organization’s position on issues shouldn’t be one person’s decision. A company shouldn’t advocate for a cause solely because it reflects the CEO’s personal beliefs.  CEOs should discuss any stance with employees from across the political spectrum first, to get a thorough view of potential stakeholder reactions and their business consequences.  Another good way to limit risk is to adopt stances that support common values.
2. Don’t allow activism to distract you from your purpose. Brands jump from one cause to another for many reasons. Perhaps they’re trying to align themselves with a special occasion, or the CEO has a new personal passion, or the media have raised awareness of a problem. A better approach is to support causes that fit with your brand’s historical positioning and activism, your core customer base, and the markets you serve.  Some brands are able to deviate from their main purpose without incurring additional risk.
3. Don’t attack your base. Companies can upset brand loyalists even when the cause they’re championing is widely supported.  You don’t have to limit your causes to those that your customer base universally agrees with, but you must understand that risk increases as your activism moves toward direct criticism of your customers’ behavior or beliefs. 
4. Team up with others. Some causes are so polarizing that supporting them will always carry high risk. If you still feel your brand must respond publicly, recognize that there’s safety in numbers.

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

Amid the ever-increasing frequency and complexity of job changes and career transitions people experience, the notion of “one life, one career” has given rise to the phenomenon of a “portfolio career” that comprises a variety of roles. Education is also expected to shift from front-end loading early in life to continuous development throughout one’s work life.

Acquiring and developing new skills has never been more important than it is today, when organizations are quickly adapting in response to disruptive forces in geopolitics, climate change, and technology. The World Economic Forum estimates that 44% of core skills will change by 2027, necessitating widespread upskilling and reskilling. Similarly, PwC research shows that 79% of CEOs globally are concerned that skills shortages will hinder their company’s growth. 

Despite the compelling pressure to engage in continuous learning, employees face formidable challenges in finding time and energy to pursue it.   To cope up with the challenge, based on their research, the authors introduced the concept of ‘learning agility’. Learning agility is a process-oriented methodology rather than a content-focused learning skill like mind mapping or other memorization techniques. The authors identified the four elements that matter most in developing learning agility: 

1. Linking Purpose to Learning.  Without motivation, there’s no battery power for learning. The authors’ regression analyses showed that having a sense of purpose for learning predicts the successful development of skills and capabilities. The sense that what we learn will make a difference motivates us to prioritize learning — and managers can link learning any new skill to an employee’s sense of purpose.
2. Creating a Learning-Rich Work Environment.  Creating a learning-rich work environment is the most critical workplace factor in fostering agility in skill acquisition, and it’s the second-most-important predictor of skill development, after purpose. A learning-rich job is defined as having work or diverse tasks out of one’s comfort zone that requires the application of new skills in different domains to succeed.  Drawing on business strategies and projects to create learning-rich opportunities, managers can extend employees’ development through experiments, projects, milestones, or assignments based on adjacent skills and complementary domains.
3. Asking Meta-Learning Questions.  The ability to reflect on one’s own learning process goes beyond learning techniques like mind mapping or heuristics; it’s about refining the way we approach growth. Meta-learning is the ability to stand back and think about what we want to learn, how to learn, the strengths and gaps in our learning process, and how to improve our learning. 
4. Nurturing a Learning Team.  Being in a diverse team to exchange resources readily and give and receive prompt feedback makes learning a fun and powerful norm.  Managers can foster development-focused teams through regular routines. For example, they can support an employee in making it a weekly priority to learn something that will help them in their current work, such as reading a book, learning how to use a new AI tool, or attending a talk. Teams can allocate 15 to 30 minutes in regular meetings for everyone to share their learning periodically.

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

We are at a critical inflection point when it comes to work.  We are hard-pressed to find a leader today who doesn’t feel the mounting pressure to do more with less while integrating technology like generative AI into day-to-day operations and future product offerings.  But it’s easy to fall into reactive mode in the face of this macro-environment, and the new world of work it is ushering in. But it’s actually this moment in which leadership must initiate proactive shifts to guide their organizations into the future. Here are the three most essential ones. 

1. Need to adopt a “Gumby Mode.” It’s the posture you take as a leader when elasticity of thinking and flexibility in problem-solving are in order. By adopting this approach, leaders gain not only agility but also resilience. They are better able to adjust when the unexpected happens and better set up to bounce back from business disruption. In today’s world of work, leading in “Gumby Mode” is not optional; it is essential.  Emerging technologies make this glaringly apparent, not only forcing us to reckon with the shelf life of our knowledge and skills but also heightening our awareness of what it feels like to be agile and adaptive rather than rigid and stuck in old patterns.
2. Cultivate a ‘customer-obsessed’ culture.  Sports metaphors in the work setting are forehead-smackingly common, nevertheless —a team mentality where your employees are following the same playbook is critical for directional alignment. Cultivating a “customer-obsessed” culture driven by an internal insights engine is the key to maximizing impact. Leaders’ playbook must be fueled by empowering their teams with deep customer knowledge, a clear understanding of the company’s direction, and a strong sense of their teams’ vital role in driving success. This dynamic approach doesn’t just enhance operations; it sparks innovation and ensures agility, and more importantly, it meets your customers’ needs.  A successful customer insights engine is one that develops a deeper curiosity (and yes, obsession) about your customers. It makes you more user-centric, strengthens operations, and enables you to build better products and craft better experiences. 
3. Require and reward continuous learning.  The final proactive leadership shift is to foster a company ethos of continuous learning. The byproduct of learning is growth. So, it benefits us to require and reward learning in our organizations in the many forms it takes, be it on-the-job upskilling, transformative reskilling, enrollment in a learning program to advance knowledge and skills, or simply asking questions.

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

Scott Walker, author of Order Out of Chaos, is a Sunday Times best-selling author and keynote speaker. One of the world’s most experienced kidnap-for-ransom negotiators, Walker has helped resolve over 300 cases worldwide.

Walker and the author discussed how to deal with difficult emotions in stressful situations. These aren’t as high stakes as hostage negotiations: a difficult situation could be a phone chat with a sibling or a difficult conversation with a colleague who frequently frustrates you. As Walker shares, collaboration is the way through these situations; he offers three specific strategies to help you to move forward and avoid a negativity spiral.

Walker has a three-step framework for engaging in a difficult conversation: embrace the power of the pause, “ride the wave,” and ask better questions. First, pause. Breathe. Regain your composure if you’ve lost it temporarily. Second, “ride the wave:” feel your feelings, but don’t say anything or react in a way that will cause you regret. Finally, ask questions with the underlying goal of supporting the other person, looking for opportunities for collaboration, and expanding your thinking. This stance requires you to put your judgment aside and be genuinely curious.

Value change.  Walker says you must break the pattern of doing the same things every time you have a conflict. For example, if in hard conversations you usually bluster forward despite tension, do this instead: Stop. When appropriate, admit you screwed up and apologize. Walker says if you’re going to break your bad patterns, you must truly value change. Then, put that value into practice.

Likeability engenders credibility.  Trust must be the foundation for any conflict or difficult negotiation. Scott said that, tragically, when kidnappers walk away from hostage negotiations, it’s because negotiators never built trust with the kidnappers. When trust is built, negotiators have a 93% chance of de-escalating the situation and achieving a successful outcome.  As a leader, you’re most likely not negotiating with kidnappers. Yet you still need to build trust with your teams so that you can engage in healthy conflict, discussion, and negotiation. The number one way to build trust, says Walker, is spending your most valuable currency: time. Spending time with your people allows for easier collaboration; however, some leaders view listening and creating rapport as “wasting time.” Says Walker to leaders: you’re dealing with people. Your teams must feel connected and cared for if they’re going to trust you.  On the other hand, if you “play hardball,” you build a reputation of throwing people under the bus. There are wider consequences when you don’t collaborate: when you’re not seeking common ground, you can be blindsided later on.

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

Venus Williams is living proof that success–on and off the tennis court–can require advocating for yourself. In 2007, after years of fighting on behalf of herself and all women tennis players, she became the first woman to receive equal prize money to male champions at Wimbledon. 

Williams’ resume as an investor and entrepreneur is no less impressive.  And somehow, Williams also found time to write Strive, a book about the lessons she’s learned in her career and “how to find your awesome,” which was published in September.  Williams spoke to Inc. about the financial lessons she’s learned during her career and why staying balanced is a myth.  Four of these lessons are:

1. Know when to pivot.  Being a successful entrepreneur requires being agile in the face of changes, such as new technologies, fluctuating interest rates, and even global politics. 
2. Find balance each day.  When you’re busy pursuing your dreams, finding balance all the time is unrealistic–something Williams knows well as both an athlete and a business owner. “I try to find a moment of balance every day,” says Williams, who likes to watch romantic comedies, even if it’s something she’s seen before or it’s playing in the background as she catches up on email. “When you find your moment every day, it helps you to maintain that strength to go forward.”  
3. Be strategic about taking a leap.  Maintaining an outside source of income can provide a sense of security and a financial cushion when you take the leap to start a new venture, says Williams. “There’s definitely a misconception that most successful entrepreneurs quit everything. You don’t have to give up the day job right away,” she says. “Having that peace of mind also gives you more clarity to focus on what you need to do, because you’re not so worried about, how am I going to keep the lights on?”  
4. Be proactive about your finances.  Williams says she wishes she’d known about the power of taking on debt to finance future opportunities and build wealth when she was younger.  “I would encourage everyone to understand the power of financial planning, whether that’s how you save or how you leverage debt,” she says. “You don’t save every penny,” she adds. “You want to still experience life today.” 

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

The very definition of entrepreneurship implies many twists and turns. Founders start companies based on an idea, form a business plan around what they believe that concept’s future to be, press their foot down on the gas pedal and off they go. Along the journey, founders are forced to make many quick but impactful decisions with limited resources and foggy knowledge about how their outcomes will play out. Essentially, they are building the base of a house, having no idea what its roof will eventually look like.

Many of these early-stage decisions are foundational and become even more significant as the company itself matures. Due to arbitrary and self-imposed goals and timelines, founders may overlook critical components to building a lasting business. Haste can be met with regret later on in the company lifecycle, costing time, human and financial resources and, potentially, the company.  Eight critical actions that founders overlook when starting their companies:

1. Properly forming their company under the right structure.  There are multiple structures that companies can take early on, including an LLC, C-Corp and S-Corp. Each has its own advantages and limitations, and it is important that founders match their company structure with their financing and tax goals. 
2. Protecting their IP.  Intellectual property should be protected at the onset of company formation and certainly before a product is launched in market. Companies should solicit an IP attorney to trademark the company and product names, logo designs and any defensible product designs. In addition, especially for technology companies, patents should be filed prior to product launch.
3. Creating a proper board of advisors.  While the foundation stage may seem premature to acquire a board of advisors, it could actually prove advantageous and even critical. The reality is founders alone cannot cover all of the skill sets and experience bases needed to ensure a positive future outcome. Even at the earliest funding stages, “team” is a core component to investors betting on a company’s success. Advisors can fill in the skill gaps that are initially missing and serve as an important determinant of an investor’s choice to invest. 
4. Determining the right financing strategy.  It’s commonly assumed that venture capital is the holy grail of investment and that the most successful companies build themselves by securing VC money. VC money is great for certain companies, but there are also restrictions.  As a founder, it is important to properly identify how success is determined for the company — asking yourself what growth looks like and how much of the company you are willing to part with in the long term.
5. Evaluating founding team dynamics and identifying the gaps.  While advisors may fill in certain near-term skill gaps, the reality is they are not working full-time at the company. Therefore, it is important to identify current and future skill gaps among the founding/executive team, outline the roles that are needed to fill them and create a timeline to hire. Some may not be necessary until the next round of financing, and others may be immediate.
6. Assessing the current macro environment.  While a founder may have the most innovative idea on the planet, the current macroeconomic environment may not be amenable to supporting it. It is important to review the broader macro environment with regard to receptivity to your product or service and the environment in general.
7. Paving their path to market.  Founders can become so enamored with their product or service that they forget to assess how they will let others know about it. It is important for a new business to clearly identify its core customer target and its total addressable market to understand how much it will cost and how much time it will take to acquire those customers.
8. Determining their long-term commitment/investment.  Jeff Bezos stated, “All overnight success takes about 10 years.” This could not be more accurate. Entrepreneurs read the shiny social media accounts of the companies that immediately skyrocket and experience a rapid hockey stick growth curve and expect that success, but success takes time. So early on, founders need to assess their own personal time horizons and determine how long they are committed to their endeavors.