Category Archives: Emerging Markets

Strategy vs. Resilience

20 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by in business, Emerging Markets

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Back in 2006 I was part of Lockheed Martin’s strategy department. I had been with the company for 6 years, and had successfully graduated their 3-year long Leadership Development Program that groomed young professionals into future executives.

I would be traveling regularly to Europe, California, Florida and New York, overseeing a number of advanced research projects and international business partnerships. I was a firm believer in strategy, and the strategic planning process that was so carefully coordinated by smart, battle hardened people with white hair.

That’s when an idea took hold: would all my strategy acumen give me an edge in an emerging economy? Could I be a successful entrepreneur there as opposed to an employee in the U.S.?

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On candles, fences and being human

09 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Emerging Markets, paradox, society

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It may just be our society’s biggest irony that we crave that which does not make us happy: certainty and predictability. Have you ever asked yourself why we tend to find a candle more romantic than a light bulb? A light bulb is obviously more reliable and more predictable! What does a candle have that a light bulb doesn’t? It flickers! It embeds randomness, unpredictability, and in that sense we see it as closer to human nature! We subconsciously are attracted to anything that is as we are: imperfect and fragile! Yet we consciously understand the taming of our environment as the elimination of anything uncertain. When are we going to learn to embrace uncertainty? When are we going to reconcile our subconscious and conscious mind?

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Emerging economies insights: the in-sourcing mindset and its implications for business and economic growth

11 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by in business, Emerging Markets, innovation, problem solving, society

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I’ve written before about the huge pool of abductive reasoning in emerging economies and the opportunity it represents for western multinationals. This piece will explore the negative implications of that same mental resource for emerging economies themselves.

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The irony of supply and demand in emerging economies as seen through the eyes of design thinking

22 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in business, design thinking, Emerging Markets, human capital, society

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Many of the countries now part of the emerging economies club can trace their recent history to totalitarian regimes and centralized economies. What centralized political and economic paradigms have proven to have in common is a proliferation of material shortages coupled with propaganda driven, unrealistic plans. And so, under such regimes, populations found creative ways to adapt by learning to by-pass absurd rules and plans and to find ways of obtaining much needed resources outside of official distribution channels.

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