“The goal [of writing] is to get to the place where your usual judgy mind has been quietened, your easy opinions get reduced and you’re in a kind of holy state of not knowing anything.”
— George Saunders
Why We Herd
Herd behavior is the basis for marketing, propaganda, economic bubbles and pyramid schemes. We often attribute blind conformity to FOMO, bad actors and social media. The truth, however, is more benign. Hype works because of a social phenomenon known as information cascades.
Cartoon Credit: Robert Mankoff / The New Yorker
Leadership in the Post-Moneyball Era
The recent mass rollout of AI tools such as GPT is accelerating our irrepressible trajectory towards technological utopia. It is more crucial than ever to rethink the role of leadership to guide us through the ensuing socio-economic disruption.
Photo Credit: NASA
Picking a Side
On July 14, 2020, President Trump signed the Hong Kong Autonomy Act into law. This law provides a foil to the Hong Kong National Security Law by imposing economic sanctions, not just on individuals and entities, but also on the financial institutions transacting with them. As this geopolitical tug-of-war continues to play out, how should financial institutions, which for decades have profited from international trade with mainland China, frame their responses?
Photo Credits: Timon Studler via Unsplash