In the 1997 Hollywood sensation Breakdown, Kurt Russell's wife is kidnapped by money-crazed truckers. To do this, they isolate him while driving in a desert country with no telephone signal. Rural connectivity of a country is an age-old problem. Enter Google & SpaceX. The 1980s were a decade of leaps & excess. While Gordon Gecko was declaring "Greed is Good", technologists were figuring out how to connect to the internet [...]

It’s without question the most cross-cultural fashion item of our modern society: Jeans. From Kazakhstan to Korea & Quebec, the blue denim jean is an iconic & timeless fashion statement. Its social cache is unquestionable. But how did this strange fabric get there? This thread is amongst the best strategy case studies. When in a competitive market find the single input or complimentary product that all your competitors need, and [...]

Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Asia (Japan first & then China) began to position itself as the manufacturing & productivity centre of the world. Shifting the global productivity axis away from Europe. Vietnam & Sri Lanka have since been working to unseat China & Japan. While the Brits (through their manufacturing industries of post-Industrial Revolution Britain) were arguing internally over the rate unionisation, the increasing cost of labour & [...]

Brendon had these sharp blue eyes with thick and silver hard set hair and dark brows that contrasted so beautifully you had to look at him twice. He had the Clark Kent chiseled jawline and the small but pouty lips. He walked with a slow but firm pace & always took his time getting up from the chair. You got the sense that, unlike all humans, time seemed to wait [...]

Those of us that spend our time analyzing the rise & fall of companies have been so drunk on our own supply of our academic frameworks & stock price analytics, that we’ve completely missed the big picture. The average Tim Cook critic focuses on how the rate of innovation (in particular radical innovation) has slowed under his tenure at Apple. We falsely believe that share price growth is a function [...]

Should the worlds’ economies not sue China(fashioned like a class action suit) for the impact of this virus on the livelihoods of ALL global citizens? Economies irreparably scarred. Businesses destroyed. Lives lost. Jobs gone. Globalization brings untold economic & social opportunities. But all OPPORTUNITIES have a RISK equal in measure. That’s how the universes balance itself. So all countries then enjoy the upside of globalization but must have a [...]

One of the gifts of COVID19 has been the realization by global leaders of how important a strong digital & telecommunications infrastructure is for their countries. This realization has been twinned by the other fact, only strong economies that have a clear and pronounced comparative edge will eke out their competitors. India is a modern wonder. Its economy is the subject of many an MBA classroom, and over the [...]

As the 27th March midnight approached, many South Africans slept away the reality of their first day on government-imposed lockdown. The mood the country mirrored the moment, somber solace & fear. News broke first on Bloomberg Terminal that international credit rating agency Moody’s had downgraded South Africa’s long-term foreign and local currency credit ratings to Ba1. Commonly known as junk status, this is the first level into sub-investment grade. [...]

Here are the hard numbers: -189,000 confirmed cases of infections as of the 16th March 2020 – 7,500 deaths – 80, 000 recoveries In South Africa, there are 62 confirmed cases that we know about. I expect that as we roll-out testing & implement a culture of workplace detection, these numbers will increase drastically over the next few weeks. But the cost to the economy has been even more [...]

As the age-old expression says, “out of the frying pan and into the fire” the world seems to have ended one global crisis only for another to start. In the past few weeks, I have been in back-to-back meetings with my clients, various teams across my investment portfolio & boards where I serve. From a high-growth FinTech startup in Cyprus that we are looking to IPO later in the year to a [...]