September was a bad press month for Ireland. The month started with Boone and Johnston[1] noting that each family in Ireland could end up being liable for Euro200,000 of public debt by 2015. Munchau[2] talked of the possibility of default and Carey and Ashton[3] provided us with a case study analysis of how the banking [...]
We have been used to a world where technology has, arguably, been the primary driver of change. Well, will technology continue its role as the architect of change for the next decade? The IT research group Gartner certainty thinks so. Earlier this month it issued a news release profiling its latest research – putting forward [...]
An interesting article appeared in today’s Financial Times[1] noting the failure of recently released 3D films – which may have implications for the take up of the next wave of consumer-focused innovation – 3D TV. Here in the double-dip threatened UK, 3DTV will follow hard on the heals of full HD TV sales. The underlying [...]
My proposition has always been that it is the period after a recession that is most relevant for business strategy. Typically, changes in, for example, consumer behaviour that we witness during the recession are merely short-term reactions. The time to get out and find out how customers’ needs are more permanently changing is after the [...]
Unfortunately, the world never moves in straight lines. That’s why predicting the future, especially when making business plans, is so difficult. A recent review of one long-term projection, Britain in 2010[1], a study prepared in in 1990 looking at the features of the UK in 2010, emphasizes this point. If we compare the projections made [...]
The perfect storm awaiting businesses in the developed world and the research that I have been conducting with a team drawn from Cass Business School and the Chartered Insurance Institute are summarised in the FT Adviser.
Many businesses face the prospect of a “perfect storm”. For those in the insurance industry, this is a combination of catastrophe losses followed by the challenges of a “W” shaped recession that could bring social upheaval and political change in many countries that we have historically considered as “stable entities”. But the perfect storm is [...]
In my review of major trends to watch I talk about New Politics – in short the prospect of quite fundamental change in the political environment due largely to the toxic confluence of the end of consumerism and austerity. If you want to explore this concept further Kagarlitsky[1] paints a succinct, but challenging, scenario. Broadly, [...]
Unlikely bedfellows you may think, but two articles from the Institute of Fiscal Studies[1], [2] can help us to see the type of future that may await us, particularly for the losers of the Great Recession, those that I call the “bloc #3“. The key points from the above articles are: (1) Public sector spending [...]
The current debate on the size of bankers’ bonuses and new regulation approaches emerging from both the US and EU may miss the most important point. The most important point is that the developed economies’ grip on the international institutions that shape the working of the global economy will weaken and faster than you may [...]
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