Our Perspective

At the relevant geopolitical level, we view the world is increasingly moving away from a collective rules-based order to one based on individual national and political discretion. Traditional guardians of the rules-based order are in some cases leading this change. This trend creates both opportunities and threats for business development and innovation in areas where regulations and compliance are the primary driver for economic activity.

In line with this geopolitical trend, capitalism is evolving into competition between systems that are designed around a centralized network of data management and those that are based on a distributed network of data management. For the first time in economic history, there is enough broadband communication capacity, computing processing speed, access to memory and storage that in great measure allow economic activity to be virtual with data being the underlying real asset. This development is allowing state designed/driven capitalism to play a more dominant and successful role in global economic activity than in the past; it is doing so by leveraging the current power afforded by centralized networking of data management. Conversely, distributed networks of data management and decision making are driving an equally powerful yet disruptive trend, the disintermediation in xTech. This trend is allowing entrepreneurs and self-styled hackers to sidestep the traditional gatekeepers in energy, manufacturing, information management, finance, biotechnology, and in some cases politics to create new innovative offerings and outcomes. This trend will destroy jobs while creating new work. It is already transforming business for legacy organizations and creating opportunity for startups.

In InfoTech, Artificial Intelligence is augmenting or replacing decision making powers away from traditional gate keepers in multiple industries. Similarly, in FinTech, Blockchain is enabling individuals to sidestep the need for traditional financial, accounting and legal institutions. Most profoundly, in BioTech, disintermediated access to CRISPR technology (the powerful DNA editing tool) is allowing researchers to manipulate microbial, plant, animal and even human life at the genomic level. While the commercial applications of many of these new technologies are still at the validation stage, their tremendous impact is already being felt in commerce and daily life.

Our daily effort for our clients is to discern value from the complexity of such general trends and developing technologies, and in turn help create a roadmap for their next offering. We envision a future that our common efforts should affords us all life-improving capability beyond anything in the past, resulting in cleaner air, cleaner water, better energy, better health and more meaningful communication.