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As the world order turns, leading companies are keeping pace. Here’s how

Jan Mischke et al., | McKinsey & Company | October 9, 2026

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read/Listen

As former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice observed at the 2026 Aspen Security Forum, “I’m very often asked, is what we’re seeing a revolution or an evolution? And I say that a revolution is what happens when you don’t see an evolution coming.

For a generation, companies and governments have operated in a broadly predictable environment of open markets and deep global integration. That world delivered enormous growth, but it also left behind a series of imbalances, among them: a widening US–China trade gap, deep dependence on foreign suppliers for goods critical to national security, and intensifying competition for the same limited set of growth arenas. To correct some of these imbalances, governments are taking an increasingly active role in the global economy, primarily through rapid expansion of industrial policy, tariffs and trade barriers, sanctions and export controls, and other measures that can distort trade.

As governments act in the national interest, the rules that companies have operated under for decades are being rewritten. Many have found the uncertainty unnerving. Most have taken action to mitigate risk—and even pursue opportunity. Leading companies are trying to understand their exposure at both the product and country level, for each aspect of their business; the speed at which they can adjust; and the costs associated with doing that. Indeed, these companies are turning their understanding of six patterns illustrating geopolitics’ impact on trade and competition into their own new playbooks for growth.

1. Globalization is not in retreat—trade is reconfiguring according to geopolitical logic.  Trade is growing, but goods are travelling a shorter political distance.  Trade is still growing, but the geopolitical distance traveled by trade is falling.  As global trade is increasingly informed by geopolitical logic, companies should anticipate changing patterns in their product flows and supply chains. These shifts in trade will create opportunities in some corridors and disruption and challenges in others. Companies that realign themselves with growing trade could maximize upside and minimize disruption.  Building that agility means scoping relevant disruption scenarios, quantifying the value at stake for the organization, compiling an ecosystem of insights by gathering regional intelligence, considering joint ventures or option contracts, building redundant sourcing, and much more. In this way, leaders can move their enterprise up the “tolerance curve” to operate in geopolitically distant environments rather than retreat from them.  Agility in today’s geopolitical environment means that geopolitical disruption from some is opportunity for others.
2. Countries are prioritizing security in critical products and allowing markets to lead in others.  Global trade is now governed by two different logics. One covers what we call “Achilles’ heel” products, where geopolitical logic is more likely to prevail and states are more likely to actively secure supply chains with less emphasis on cost. The other covers the rest of product trade, which is primarily governed by market logic: price, speed, and quality still rule. Leading companies are learning to run both playbooks simultaneously.  The companies that saw this coming acted early to secure their supplies of critical Achilles’ heel products.  Beyond Achilles’ heel products, trade corridors are likely to keep growing based on economics. Companies’ decisions to enter new markets will increasingly depend on their existing footprint and operations and whether there are established or strengthening trade corridors between two countries. For their part, top companies are rewiring themselves not just to optimize costs but also to broaden their footprints so they can shift to more favorable trade corridors.
3. Investment competitiveness is a national priority creating growth opportunities for companies.  The shifting geopolitical sands have highlighted the lack of investment in strategic industries such as energy and semiconductors.  There are a variety of levers that both states and companies can pull to address this concern. Capital expenditures can be industrialized, accelerated in permitting and execution, and made more efficient. R&D can be parallelized, and regulatory oversight can be reformed. Energy supplies can be significantly expanded, and labor productivity can be supercharged by deploying AI. Companies can take steps to address some of these, but, ultimately, addressing the structural challenges behind the competitiveness challenges will require coordinated public and private action.
4. Balance sheets and economic pathways are diverging, reshaping the cost of capital and growth outlook.  Capital is flowing faster than trade, making it a useful early signal of where trade is headed next.  There are three ways to address these imbalances: grow out of them, inflate them away, or reset asset values and debt.
5. AI is a major geopolitical concern, with leaders diversifying access to models and infrastructure.  Beyond capital and compute, data may become an increasingly important source of competitive advantage. Privacy, data access, and data governance differ substantially across China, Europe, and the United States, shaping the volume and types of data available to train, refine, and deploy AI systems. These differences could determine both model development and application-level advantage—and, in turn, the longer-term competitive landscape.
6. Energy security is a geostrategic priority, and a site selection criterion.  About two-thirds of the world’s energy moves through at least one geographic chokepoint, and one-third crosses geopolitical lines. About 95 percent of the global population relies on energy imports, so these vulnerabilities matter.

Together, these six patterns describe the same underlying shift: Globalization is not retreating; it is realigning along geopolitical lines. Governments are taking more active roles in the economy to address imbalances left behind by the era of markets. The companies that are moving first to secure critical inputs, build competitive advantage, capture growth in trade corridors and capital flows, and build organizational agility are treating this reordering as an opportunity rather than a threat.

And they are not betting on everything with a single view of the future. They are building optionality—that is, scenario planning with real value at stake attached, signposts that tell them which future is arriving, and playbooks they can execute when those signals become clear. That discipline is what can turn geopolitical volatility from a threat into a true source of advantage.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. For a generation, companies and governments have operated in a broadly predictable environment of open markets and deep global integration. That world delivered enormous growth, but it also left behind a series of imbalances, among them: a widening US–China trade gap, deep dependence on foreign suppliers for goods critical to national security, and intensifying competition for the same limited set of growth arenas. To correct some of these imbalances, governments are taking an increasingly active role in the global economy, primarily through rapid expansion of industrial policy, tariffs and trade barriers, sanctions and export controls, and other measures that can distort trade.
2. As governments act in the national interest, the rules that companies have operated under for decades are being rewritten.   Leading companies are trying to understand their exposure at both the product and country level, for each aspect of their business; the speed at which they can adjust; and the costs associated with doing that. 
3. Companies are turning their understanding of six patterns illustrating geopolitics’ impact on trade and competition into their own new playbooks for growth.  A) Globalization is not in retreat—trade is reconfiguring according to geopolitical logic.  Trade is growing, but goods are travelling a shorter political distance.  B)  Investment competitiveness is a national priority creating growth opportunities for companies.  C)  Balance sheets and economic pathways are diverging, reshaping the cost of capital and growth outlook.  D)  AI is a major geopolitical concern, with leaders diversifying access to models and infrastructure.  E)  Energy security is a geostrategic priority, and a site selection criterion.   And F) Countries are prioritizing security in critical products and allowing markets to lead in others.

Full Article

(Copyright lies with the publisher)

Topics:  Global Trade, Geo-political Distance

Six wild ideas for perpetuating your mind

By Antonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review | October 15, 2026

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read/Listen

Have you ever thought about what makes you you? Science assures us it has everything to do with the three-pound organ between our ears, with its billions of neurons and trillions of delicate connections. But it’s a lot trickier to explain why we have a sense of self-awareness or to pin down precisely where that first memory of Mommy actually resides. As we age, we forget most of what we’ve experienced, yet there’s still undeniable continuity: At 30, or 50, or 70, you will still be you.

To preserve that elusive continuity of self, some far-thinking technologists are working on ways to keep your brain going—even beyond death. Let’s call them the “mind savers.” They’re exploring everything from freezing brains in liquid nitrogen to augmenting living ones to uploading our memories to the cloud. Here, we look at six possible paths for keeping your mind going, how feasible they’d be, and what benefits the ­present-day research might bring—even if cognitive immortality doesn’t pan out.

1. Head transplant.  Goal An entirely new body.  Key Tech Required Spinal-cord fusion.  Status Mired in technical and ethical issues.  In 1970, the neurosurgeon Robert White removed the head of a rhesus monkey and transplanted it onto the body of another. The patched-together primate lived several hours before succumbing to its injuries. White, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, tried the surgery several times. Remarkably, the reattached heads could move their eyes and mouths, but because he’d severed the monkeys’ spinal cords, those heads never gained control of their new bodies.  White’s experiments have been a source of grim fascination ever since. But to a few neuroscientists they’re inspiration, suggesting that one day a human head transplant—or, as some call it, a body transplant—could succeed. 
2. Mindclones.  Goal Conscious software avatars.  Key Tech Required Artificial intelligence.  Status Available in unconscious formats.  In her 2014 book Virtually Human: The Promise—and the Peril—of Digital Immor­tality, the futurist and biotech executive Martine Rothblatt put forward an argument for what she called “mindclones.” People would upload their diaries, recordings, social media histories, and other personal data into a digital filing cabinet. Then, via software she termed “mindware,” they would create realistic digital avatars of themselves. In Rothblatt’s view, as technology advanced, mindclones would inevitably be considered conscious and even “afforded human rights” after passing psychological screening.  Just 12 years after the book came out, artificial-intelligence technology has already brought some of her predictions to “life,” so to speak.   What’s still missing from Rothblatt’s mindclone prediction is evidence that these avatars have—or ever will have—any kind of true self-awareness. (We asked ChatGPT if it’s conscious, and it answered, “Probably not.”) But all that remains a gray zone. Neuroscientists don’t have a clear definition of consciousness, much less a diagnostic test they could apply to an avatar.   Instead, what if the final determination is in the eye of the beholder? Your digital clone might not be you. But at some point it might be good enough for me. 
3. Brain in a jar.  Goal Disembodied brains.  Key Tech Required Life-support perfusion.  Status Jars, yes—alive, not so much.  In the 1983 comedy The Man with Two Brains, Steve Martin plays a scientist who falls in love with a brain that he keeps alive in a jar filled with a fictional life-sustaining fluid and that talks to him via telepathy.  Last year a company called Bexorg started showing journalists actual human brains in vats, which it has been acquiring from organ donors soon after death and then “rebooting” by infusing them with oxygen-rich artificial blood.  The company claims these “physiologically intact human brains” will be more useful than animals for drug testing and safer than trying experiments on living volunteers.  What’s more, right now a brain can be kept “alive” outside the body for only about 24 hours. That wouldn’t be much of a second life. Still, efforts are underway to improve the life-support systems. The company claims it hopes to eventually keep its brains going for two weeks.
4. Gradual brain replacement.  Goal Extreme life extension.  Key Tech Required Lab-grown cortical tissue.  Status Now funded by your tax dollars.  How would you like to replace your brain, little by little? The process would go slowly enough to avoid your notice, but quickly enough to undo the inevitable damage that aging brings. In 2026, this wild idea got a massive endorsement from the US government when ARPA-H, a health agency that backs high-risk projects, committed up to $175 million to a program it calls FRONT, for “functional repair of neocortical tissue.”  
5. Brain upload.  Goal Whole-brain emulation.  Key Tech Required Connectome maps.  Status Give it another century.  You are your connectome.” That’s the famous hypothesis of the Princeton neuroscientist Sebastian Seung. It states that memory and identity reside in the brain’s impossibly complex network of hundreds of trillions of synapses—delicate junctions between neurons. Scientists are already mapping this wiring in simpler animals. Two years ago, Seung took part in analyzing a fly brain that had been cut into paper-thin sheets and imaged with an electron microscope. Then he and his colleagues used image-analysis software to trace 139,255 neurons and about 55 million synapses. The fly map could lead to energy-efficient software that computes the way real brains do, Seung says.   Others believe the ultimate outcome of “connectomics” research  will be what’s called “whole-brain emulation,” or sometimes just “uploading.” It’s the idea, popular in some quarters of Silicon Valley, that a simulation created from a sliced-up brain could become so detailed that it would reproduce not only a generic intelligence but a particular one, like yours—complete with memories and opinions, and able to live again in a data server somewhere. 
6. Synthetic neocortex.  Goal An extra brain.  Key Tech Required Bio-hybrid interfaces.  Status Stealth mod.  The futurist Ray Kurzweil likes to say evolution’s key innovation was the creation of the neocortex—the thin extra sheet on the outermost portion of the brain, where we humans do math and recognize patterns. And he’s predicted what the next evolutionary jump could be. Someday, he says, advanced nanobots will wire up our brain cells to a “synthetic neocortex” in the cloud.  That’s right: an extra brain.  Recently, we’ve seen inklings of how this might come to pass. In 2024, Science Corporation, in California, unveiled a “biohybrid” brain-computer interface featuring nerve cells grown on a digital chip. Placed on an animal’s brain, these cells sent out long, thin axons that integrated with the animal’s own neurons. The result: two-way communication from computer to brain, in the brain’s language.  The technology could permit new types of medicine, like an implant that directs brain cells to produce dopamine and thereby treat Parkinson’s. But Max Hodak, the company’s CEO, says it also might count as a new brain part, which he likens to a “big, externalized cranial nerve.” 

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Have you ever thought about what makes you you? Science assures us it has everything to do with the three-pound organ between our ears, with its billions of neurons and trillions of delicate connections. But it’s a lot trickier to explain why we have a sense of self-awareness or to pin down precisely where that first memory of Mommy actually resides. As we age, we forget most of what we’ve experienced, yet there’s still undeniable continuity: At 30, or 50, or 70, you will still be you.
2. To preserve that elusive continuity of self, some far-thinking technologists are working on ways to keep your brain going—even beyond death. Let’s call them the “mind savers.” They’re exploring everything from freezing brains in liquid nitrogen to augmenting living ones to uploading our memories to the cloud. Here, we look at six possible paths for keeping your mind going, how feasible they’d be, and what benefits the ­present-day research might bring—even if cognitive immortality doesn’t pan out.
3. A) Head transplant.  Goal An entirely new body.  Key Tech Required Spinal-cord fusion.  Status Mired in technical and ethical issues.  B) Mindclones.  Goal Conscious software avatars.  Key Tech Required Artificial intelligence.  Status Available in unconscious formats.  C) Brain in a jar.  Goal Disembodied brains.  Key Tech Required Life-support perfusion.  Status Jars, yes—alive, not so much.  D) Brain upload.  Goal Whole-brain emulation.  Key Tech Required Connectome maps.  Status Give it another century.  E) Synthetic neocortex.  Goal An extra brain.  Key Tech Required Bio-hybrid interfaces.  Status Stealth mod.  And F) Gradual brain replacement.  Goal Extreme life extension.  Key Tech Required Lab-grown cortical tissue.  Status Now funded by your tax dollars.

Full Article

(Copyright lies with the publisher)

Topics:  Technology & Humans, Perpetuating your mind

Strategy & Business Model Section

Do You Know What Your Customers Value?

By Vikas Mittal et al., | Harvard Business Review Magazine | November–December 2026 Issue

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read/Listen

Most companies work hard to get close to customers. Managers also regularly compare how their product offerings stack up against the competition, so it’s not surprising that executives are confident about their knowledge of customer needs and whether they’re satisfying those needs better than their rivals do.

Based on their extensive study, the authors found that executives did indeed spend a great deal of time listening to customers, monitoring competitors, and looking to spot industry trends. But they found that rather than using a scientific approach to interpret the information they gathered, they routinely took cognitive shortcuts. As new factors surfaced and different executives focused on different ones, companies’ strategies for winning customers shifted from year to year, confusing customers about the underlying value propositions the firms were offering. As customers switched to competitors, sales dwindled. Meanwhile, the costs of pivoting caused margins to shrink, customers didn’t get what they wanted, employees were burdened by the need to work on multiple initiatives that added little value, and shareholders earned average or below-average returns.

The executives at the companies the authors studied were making two mistakes routinely:  They prioritized the wrong drivers.  And they switched the priorities.  Why It Happens.  In 1979 the psychologist Robyn Dawes published a landmark paper titled “The Robust Beauty of Improper Linear Models in Decision Making.” Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize–winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, hailed it as “an instant classic” and noted, “Social science has yet to catch up with his original insight.”  The paper upended the prevailing wisdom that the best way to make important decisions was to rely on experienced experts: Let them identify key variables, consider the data on them, and arrive at a judgment. Dawes showed that statistical linear models, which mathematically weight inputs to predict an outcome, consistently outperformed expert judgment.

The authors’ research uncovered two systematic tendencies driving such missteps.  A) Reliance on salience.  People have a propensity to focus on top-of-mind information—the customer complaint from last week, a major competitor’s announcement, what worked at an executive’s previous job, or a board member’s pet concern.  Two sources of salience became clear: Listening to customers and Competitive benchmarking. B) Unsupported assumptions.  Executives frequently drew conclusions about chains of cause and effect without any empirical evidence.

The Fix: Achieve More by Doing Less.  If the problem is that human judgment fails at information integration, the solution isn’t to think harder or apply more judgment. It’s to retool the customer strategy process so that executives use statistical models to understand what they’re doing wrong and how to address it. Through trial and error with multiple firms, the authors have developed a five-step process that will improve companies’ returns.  Surface the misalignment.  Determine value drivers’ lift potential.  Incorporate value drivers into daily work.  Cut non-value-adding activities.  And don’t market the strategy until you’re actually executing it.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Based on their extensive study, the authors found that executives did indeed spend a great deal of time listening to customers, monitoring competitors, and looking to spot industry trends. But they found that rather than using a scientific approach to interpret the information they gathered, they routinely took cognitive shortcuts.
2. The executives at the companies the authors studied were making two mistakes routinely:  They prioritized the wrong drivers.  And they switched the priorities.   The authors’ research uncovered two systematic tendencies driving such missteps:  reliance on salience and unsupported assumptions.
3. If the problem is that human judgment fails at information integration, the solution isn’t to think harder or apply more judgment. It’s to retool the customer strategy process so that executives use statistical models to understand what they’re doing wrong and how to address it. Through trial and error with multiple firms, the authors have developed a five-step process that will improve companies’ returns.  Surface the misalignment.  Determine value drivers’ lift potential.  Incorporate value drivers into daily work.  Cut non-value-adding activities.  And don’t market the strategy until you’re actually executing it.

Full Article

(Copyright lies with the publisher)

Topics:  Strategy, Business Model, Decision-making

What Kind of Chief Purpose Officer Does Your Company Need?

By Albena Björck and Nicole Steller | MIT Sloan Management Review | Fall 2026 Issue

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read/Listen

Many companies today declare a corporate purpose and subsequently find that translating it into strategy, culture, and daily decisions is difficult. Underlying that challenge is a critical question: Who will ensure that a purpose commitment is operationalized?

In response, companies seeking to institutionalize purpose are creating a new executive role. Cisco, Deloitte, Virgin Atlantic, and others have appointed chief purpose officers (CPOs), signaling that organizations are increasingly recognizing the need for dedicated leadership of these efforts. (See “What Every CPO Must Do.”) The authors’ study of 56 of these emergent leaders reveals that individuals can take markedly different approaches to the role, depending on how purpose is conceived at their organization and the degree to which it has been operationalized.

The identified four leadership archetypes that reveal distinct ways in which purpose becomes operational and examined the conditions that enable or constrain their impact.

Four Types of Purpose Leadership. 

1. Visionary CPOs often emerge in smaller, family-owned, or founder-led organizations. In these settings, values are often deep in the company’s DNA but not explicitly articulated or translated into strategy.3 For these leaders, purpose is an ethical and social obligation that must be lived collectively but not necessarily communicated outward. They inspire others to embrace and embody the organization’s purpose, fostering collective commitment to executing a purpose-driven strategy. They translate the company’s core values into a shared sense of meaning for employees. Their leadership is deeply personal, and they identify closely with the organizational purpose.  Visionary CPOs prioritize helping employees connect to purpose on an emotional level.
2. Activist CPOs work on the front lines of corporate transformation. They are most often situated in large, complex organizations characterized by conflicting stakeholder demands and sensitive issues. When such organizations are confronted with commercial pressures, political tensions, or inertia, they often struggle to uphold their stated values. The goal of the activist CPO is to challenge the status quo and ignite new energy. They see their role as reminding people what the organization stands for, holding it accountable to its purpose, and confronting drift and ethical blind spots.  Their leadership style is bold and unapologetic as they ask uncomfortable questions to probe whether decisions are prioritizing profit over people and purpose.
3. Architect CPOs typically operate at the upper levels of large multinationals. In such environments, a formal purpose statement usually exists but has yet to be fully understood and adopted across the organization. Architect CPOs primarily identify as institutional changemakers who build the structural foundations that enable purpose to become relevant, durable, and measurable. Rather than relying on bottom-up engagement, they strive to hardwire purpose into the systems that drive performance. In doing so, they demonstrate that a strategically embedded purpose can endure beyond the tenure of any individual leader.  Architect CPOs focus on alignment between purpose, strategy, structure, and performance systems.
4. PR strategist CPOs excel at crafting a cohesive narrative around purpose. The role often takes this shape in large, dispersed, brand-driven organizations where the purpose must be communicated consistently across geographies and stakeholders. PR strategists construct a deliberate, repeatable story designed to align how the organization is understood by employees, customers, investors, and the public. They align internal commitments and external reputation around a shared pro-social story that’s intended to engage and influence key stakeholders, foster identification with the organization’s values, and motivate behavior consistent with its overarching purpose.  PR strategist CPOs look for creative ways to make purpose visible and credible.

As organizations move to appoint a CPO, they must ask: Which kind of leader is needed now? What work must they do? When will the work change? What support will enable them to succeed? The leaders who get this right will understand that their job is not to embody purpose permanently but to institutionalize it so thoroughly that their own archetype, in time, becomes unnecessary.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Many companies today declare a corporate purpose and subsequently find that translating it into strategy, culture, and daily decisions is difficult. Underlying that challenge is a critical question: Who will ensure that a purpose commitment is operationalized?  In response, companies seeking to institutionalize purpose are creating a new executive role.  
2. The authors’ study of 56 of these emergent leaders reveals that individuals can take markedly different approaches to the role, depending on how purpose is conceived at their organization and the degree to which it has been operationalized.   The study identified four leadership archetypes of CPOs:  the largest group (39%) was the visionaries, who aim to inspire shared meaning and emotional connection. About one-fifth were activists, who confront institutional contradictions and use purpose as a moral compass, while one-quarter were architects, who strive to institutionalize purpose through governance and systems. PR strategists were the smallest group (16%); they prioritize crafting coherent narratives that align brands and communication.
3. As organizations move to appoint a CPO, they must ask: Which kind of leader is needed now? What work must they do? When will the work change? What support will enable them to succeed? The leaders who get this right will understand that their job is not to embody purpose permanently but to institutionalize it so thoroughly that their own archetype, in time, becomes unnecessary. 

Full Article

(Copyright lies with the publisher)

Topics:  Chief Purpose Officer

Move slow and make things: What Japanese craftsmanship can teach business about quality, patience, and expertise when AI makes speed cheap

By Matt Alt and David Schonthal | Fortune | October 18, 2026

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read/Listen

For thirty years, the dominant logic of Western business has been simple: move fast and break things. The first mover has the advantage. Scale before you’re ready. Ship before it’s perfect. Ask forgiveness later. This thinking has produced extraordinary wealth and genuine innovation. It has also created a generation of companies that mistake velocity for value, and are only belatedly discovering that the two are not the same thing.

AI has effectively disrupted the disruptors. Speed is now free, which means, for the first time in history, speed is worthless. The ability for anyone to generate strategy, code, or creative work in seconds effectively filled in the moats built on blitzscaling overnight.

But this is in fact the opportunity hiding inside the greatest technological acceleration of our lifetimes. AI doesn’t just automate tasks. It clarifies, perhaps for the first time, which human contributions actually matter. It also hands companies a gift few have thought hard about. When machines absorb the administrative and the routine, the defining question becomes what to do with the hours they return. Machines excel at generating the average. Closing the gap between the merely good and the truly extraordinary remains stubbornly, wonderfully human.

The Japanese have a word for people who excel at their chosen craft: shokunin. It is often translated as “craftsperson,” but what it really embodies is a quiet competence borne from mastering generations of experience, joined to a sense of pride and a dash of gratitude, both to those who came before and to the materials and people that make the work possible.

That combination produces something rare: the taste and skill to deliver quality, along with the humility to admit when change is necessary and the confidence to see a pivot through. There’s a reason some of the planet’s oldest companies can be found in Japan. Nintendo opened its doors in 1889; Shiseido in 1872; the construction firm Kongo Gumi, 578. No, that’s not a typo. These firms revere tradition, but not out of nostalgia. They treat inherited wisdom as something you adapt to changing times so the next generation can flourish, not something you embalm.

To a shokunin, the question is not “what can we automate?” It is “what must we never automate?”

Every business leader already knows the older version of this rule: never outsource your competitive advantage, never put distance between the company and what makes it special. AI tools are simply the latest way to make that age-old mistake. Firms that know exactly where the line sits hold quiet advantages their competitors cannot purchase or replicate. Shokunin thinking deepens quality, but it also paves the way for innovation. Businesses that rediscover its values will gain what their velocity-chasing competitors cannot buy, borrow, or automate. They will have the confidence to know when something is truly good, and the judgment to pivot when circumstances demand it.

AI raises the floor. Shokunin thinking raises the ceiling.

Principle 1: Go deep, not wide.  Constraints look like limitations. Often they are the source of your advantage. Abandon them and you become one of a thousand competitors rather than the only maker of what you make. Just as important, knowing what you do best is what steadies you when conditions turn.  The key insight: Master one thing completely and you will never be lost when the world turns. Depth is what makes reinvention possible.

Principle 2: Taste is a skill.  The key insight: Anyone can copy what sells. Only those who understand why it’s good can make something worth copying.

Principle 3: Patience as strategy.  The key insight: The businesses that last are the ones that made everyone in their chain want them to succeed. Trust compounds. Hype depreciates.

Principle 4: Sign your work.  The key insight: When your name is on the work, you cannot hide behind the process. The one who cannot hide does their finest work.

In the age of AI, the value of these principles has never been higher. When machines can instantly replicate the average, the only true moat is the exceptional.

Business leaders are not the only ones arriving at this conclusion. Customers are, too. Vinyl records just posted their nineteenth consecutive year of growth, passing $1 billion in US sales in an era when streaming has made music essentially free. Some of the most-watched videos online are simply craftspeople working in silence. Young people are choosing hobbies that punish impatience: ceramics, bread baking, hand-rolled pasta, letterpress printing. Nobody has ever growth-hacked a sourdough starter. This is not nostalgia but a signal that in a world of instant everything, doing something slowly and well has become its own form of rebellion, and its own form of value.

So, before your next technology decision, take an inventory. For every AI tool your organization is adopting or considering, ask what human capability it replaces, and whether that capability was part of what made you good. If the answer is yes, the efficiency gain may be a competitive loss in disguise. And when AI does return hours to your organization, resist the urge to fill them with more output. Invest them the way the masters do, in the craft itself. Find those capabilities. Protect them. Move slow, and make things… well.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. For thirty years, the dominant logic of Western business has been simple: move fast and break things. AI has effectively disrupted the disruptors. Speed is now free, which means, for the first time in history, speed is worthless. The ability for anyone to generate strategy, code, or creative work in seconds effectively filled in the moats built on blitzscaling overnight.  But this is in fact the opportunity hiding inside the greatest technological acceleration of our lifetimes. AI doesn’t just automate tasks. It clarifies, perhaps for the first time, which human contributions actually matter.
2. The Japanese have a word for people who excel at their chosen craft: shokunin. It is often translated as “craftsperson,” but what it really embodies is a quiet competence borne from mastering generations of experience, joined to a sense of pride and a dash of gratitude, both to those who came before and to the materials and people that make the work possible.  That combination produces something rare: the taste and skill to deliver quality, along with the humility to admit when change is necessary and the confidence to see a pivot through.
3. Shokunin implies four principles:  Go deep, not wide.  Taste is a skill.  Patience as strategy.  And sign your work because the one who cannot hide does their finest work.

Full Article

(Copyright lies with the publisher)

Topics:  Strategy, Craftsmanship, Shokunin

Personal Development, Leading & Managing Section

How To Turn Content Creation Into Business Development

By Expert Panel | Forbes | October 20, 2026

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read/Listen

For solopreneurs, creating content can do more than attract subscribers or generate advertising revenue. A podcast, newsletter or video series can introduce a business to potential clients, strengthen professional relationships and open doors to partnerships. Treat content as a business-development tool and a way to build an audience.

Forbes Business Development Council members share how solopreneurs can use content to build credibility, reach new consumers and create growth opportunities.

Borrow Guest Credibility To Reach New Audiences.  Podcasts and YouTube can be powerful business development tools. Use recorded media to interview prospective clients or, better yet, industry leaders your ideal customers already trust. Their participation builds your credibility by association and recordings can be clipped into social content that extends your reach, especially when guests share it too.

Spotlight Clients And Partners To Generate Referrals.  Use your content as a relationship-building machine. Spotlight clients and partners through newsletters, interviews and social channels. This deepens relationships and naturally generates referrals when you elevate the people in your network.

Reach Established Audiences Instead Of Building Your Own.  You don’t build an audience;  borrow them. Try to appear on leadership podcasts because audiences were already showing up for these conversations. You don’t need to build trust from zero. you just had to be worth the invite. That’s the real lesson: Content creation isn’t only about building your own platform—it’s getting in front of ones that already exist. Clients and partnerships followed the exposure.

Create Access Through Meaningful Conversations.  Use content to create access, not just audience. Invite prospective clients, industry leaders or potential partners into meaningful conversations. A thoughtful podcast, interview or exchange creates value before any commercial ask. The strongest business relationships rarely start with a transaction; they begin with shared interests, curiosity, relevance and trust.

Educate Prospects To Reveal Where Demand Exists.  Create content that educates prospects and demonstrates how you can help, without making every episode, article or video a pitch for your product. Focus on the market, its challenges and the outcomes your audience wants. Publish consistently and track engagement: what people return for, share or respond to. That reveals where demand exists before you have to guess during a sales conversation.

Others are:

Turn Guest Interviews Into Warm Introductions

Address Specific Client Problems To Attract Buyers

Turn Expert Content Into Relationship-Building Opportunities

Use Industry Insights To Start Business Conversations

Answer Buyer Questions To Attract Brand Partnerships

And Answer Buyer Questions To Attract Brand Partnerships

2 key takeaways from the article

1. For solopreneurs, creating content can do more than attract subscribers or generate advertising revenue. A podcast, newsletter or video series can introduce a business to potential clients, strengthen professional relationships and open doors to partnerships. Treat content as a business-development tool and a way to build an audience.
2. Forbes Business Development Council members share how solopreneurs can use content to build credibility, reach new consumers and create growth opportunities.  A few of these are:  Borrow Guest Credibility To Reach New Audiences.  Spotlight Clients And Partners To Generate Referrals.  Reach Established Audiences Instead Of Building Your Own.  Create Access Through Meaningful Conversations.  Educate Prospects To Reveal Where Demand Exists.  Turn Guest Interviews Into Warm Introductions.  Address Specific Client Problems To Attract Buyers.  Turn Expert Content Into Relationship-Building Opportunities.  Use Industry Insights To Start Business Conversations.  Answer Buyer Questions To Attract Brand Partnerships.  And Answer Buyer Questions To Attract Brand Partnerships.

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Topics:  Solopreneurs, Thought Leadership, Personal Branding, Personal Development

Entrepreneurship Section

Do These 5 Things Before You Pitch an Investor

By Amie Sheridan | Inc | October 23, 2026

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read/Listen

The people in highest demand in this world are the ones writing the checks.  Founders line up at events to bend investors’ ears.  A survey of nearly 900 venture capitalists found that firms look at roughly 100 companies for every one they invest in, and the average firm makes only a handful of investments a year.

If investors are only doing business with 1% of the startups they review, imagine what the chance of success looks like for inbound pitches. Pretty bleak.  When it comes to landing a response or request for pitch deck from an investor, startups need to work smarter, not harder. 

Here are five things founders can do to increase their chances of getting a response from an investor.

1. Polish your external presentation.  Update your LinkedIn profile with a professional headshot and current title, company and about sections that match your deck. Make sure your website loads. Use an email address on your company domain. Make your product or service easy to see and digest. A polished, consistent presence answers questions before they’re asked and resolves any early doubts.
2. Know your numbers inside and out.  Founders who stumble over their metrics lose credibility fast. Before any conversation or emailed pitch, know your monthly revenue or users, growth rate, burn rate, runway, customer acquisition cost. Have those numbers on hand at all times. Equally as important, know how much you’re raising and why. Remember that investors are buying risk. The lower the perceived risk, the more eager they are to learn more. A lack of knowledge around your business dramatically increases perceived risk.
3. Do your homework on the investor.  Study the investor’s past investments. Many times, these are listed on their firm’s website. Some investors post about their investments on LinkedIn and Substack. Take the time to read as much as you can about the stage they invest in, the size of their checks, the sectors they favor, and whether they lead rounds or follow. Decide consciously if you are a match.
4. Arm yourself with customer success stories.  Your customer success stories could be the proof an investor needs to turn a no into a yes. This goes beyond logos. Before you pitch an investor, ready yourself with a few results-oriented data points around your current customers. Share one customer success nugget inside every outbound pitch. This simple step can build credibility faster than piling on more data around your product.
5. Cultivate a warm introduction.  It goes without saying that warm introductions are the gold standard in the world of venture. The aforementioned study cited that more than 30% of deals came through an investor’s professional network, and that really comes down to trust. Start building those relationships well before you need them. Attend events, engage with your network, and when the time is right, make the ask for a referral with a short, forwardable note your contacts can pass along. 

The odds will never be in a founder’s favor, but some smart preparation can change that. In a crowded inbox, the founders who get a response are the most prepared. Tighten up your profile. Have your metrics ready. Do your research. Lead with customer wins. Build your network before you need it, and then step into the ring.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. The people in highest demand in this world are the ones writing the checks.  Founders line up at events to bend investors’ ears.   A survey of nearly 900 venture capitalists found that firms look at roughly 100 companies for every one they invest in, and the average firm makes only a handful of investments a year.
2. If investors are only doing business with 1% of the startups they review, imagine what the chance of success looks like for inbound pitches. Pretty bleak.  When it comes to landing a response or request for pitch deck from an investor, startups need to work smarter, not harder. 
3. Five things founders can do to increase their chances of getting a response from an investor.  Polish your external presentation.  Know your numbers inside and out.  Do your homework on the investor.  Arm yourself with customer success stories.  And cultivate a warm introduction. 

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Topics:  Startups, Entrepreneurship, Pitching to investors

3 Lessons From Building a Venture Fund That Can Help You Make Smarter Business Decisions.

By Len Jessup | Entrepreneur | October 23, 2026

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read/Listen

According to the author early in his career, he remembers sitting in a doctoral seminar, looking around the room and thinking, “I don’t belong here.” Everyone else seemed sharper, more prepared and more confident. Meanwhile, he was mentally editing every thought beforehe lets it leave his mouth.

According to the author, eventually he realized he had developed a pretty effective system for never embarrassing himself: Don’t say anything until you are certain you are right. Unfortunately, it was also an effective system for never growing. So he gave himself a different rule: If I’m not embarrassing myself at least once a day, I’m probably not pushing myself hard enough.  Decades later, after moving into entrepreneurship and venture investing, he turned that lesson into a more disciplined approach. He calls it Act, Adjust, Absorb.

Act: Know what ‘enough’ looks like.  “Move before you’re ready” is terrible advice if it means ignoring evidence. Leaders need to distinguish between certainty, which is rare, and a sufficient signal, which they can actively look for.  The key is not to seek validation for what you already believe, but to ask questions that might prove you wrong. What am I missing? What has to be true for this to work? Where could this fail? At some point, more analysis stops reducing risk and starts postponing action. That’s when leaders need to act.

Adjust: Make the first move small enough to learn from.  Move early on reversible decisions, but proceed carefully when your decisions create obligations for others.  Before making a consequential commitment, pressure-test it with five questions:  What assumption am I testing?  What is the smallest credible move I can make?  What has to be true for this to work?  Who becomes dependent on us if I say yes?  What evidence would cause me to accelerate, change course, or stop?

Absorb: Turn experience into a better system.  Leaders often act and adjust but skip the most valuable step: absorbing the lesson. We get busy and move on. But entrepreneurship gets easier when we treat this mindset like a muscle and strengthen it through small, repeated efforts. To put this into practice, set aside time each week to identify one conversation, question, or decision you’ve been avoiding. Address it early, then reflect on three questions:  What did I expect would happen? What actually happened? What did I learn?

3 key takeaways from the article

1. According to the author early in his career, he remembers sitting in a doctoral seminar, looking around the room and thinking, “I don’t belong here.” Everyone else seemed sharper, more prepared and more confident. Meanwhile, he was mentally editing every thought beforehe lets it leave his mouth.
2. According to the author, eventually he realized he had developed a pretty effective system for never embarrassing himself: Don’t say anything until you are certain you are right. Unfortunately, it was also an effective system for never growing. So he gave himself a different rule: If I’m not embarrassing myself at least once a day, I’m probably not pushing myself hard enough.  
3. Decades later, after moving into entrepreneurship and venture investing, he turned that lesson into a more disciplined approach. He calls it Act, Adjust, Absorb.  Act: Know what ‘enough’ looks like.  “Move before you’re ready” is terrible advice if it means ignoring evidence. The key is not to seek validation for what you already believe, but to ask questions that might prove you wrong.  Adjust: Make the first move small enough to learn from.  Move early on reversible decisions, but proceed carefully when your decisions create obligations for others.  And Absorb:  Turn experience into a better system.  Leaders often act and adjust but skip the most valuable step: absorbing the lesson. We get busy and move on. But entrepreneurship gets easier when we treat this mindset like a muscle and strengthen it through small, repeated efforts. 

Full Article

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Topics:  Entrepreneurship, Personal Development, Leadership