The System Gambit

The System Anti-Gambit When paradigms break, the biggest threat to an investor or operator is their own most sensible instinct. How to tell a real structural move from a panic reflex? When India liberalised in 1991, it made the sensible bet. Decades of Nehruvian investment had left the country with graduates, so India sold their brainpower to the world through IT and knowledge services: hire a you...

In 2008, as the world’s largest banks collapsed or were nationalised, one smaller bank on Fleet Street had the opposite problem: too much money was arriving at its door. C. Hoare & Co., founded in 1672 and older than both the Bank of England and the United States, came through the crisis with barely a scratch, its deposits swelling as frightened money looked for somewhere run by prudent people wit...

Explore the science of causality with Quentin Gallea, Ph. D, as he discusses how understanding causal inference can improve decision-making in business, personal life, and policy. Learn practical frameworks, common pitfalls, and the importance of humility in causal reasoning. Takeaways:The importance of causality in decision-makingFrameworks for causal inference and analysisCommon pitfalls and bia...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ1YdDep3kY In this insightful interview, John Brandon Elam discusses the importance of decision-making in organizations, the limitations of traditional planning, and how to leverage decision systems and policies for better business outcomes. Drawing from his book and influences like Warren Powell and the Phoenix Project, he offers practical frameworks for understan...

Ratul Ahmed shares her extraordinary journey from jumping out of airplanes over 4,000 times to leading risk management at global financial institutions. Discover how extreme sports taught her invaluable lessons about risk, resilience, and leadership that he applies daily in his professional life. Takeaways:The parallels between skydiving and risk management: building muscle memory and mental model...

This appeared originally on Part-Maven Part-Maverick : India’s Growth: A Complex System of Opportunities and Challenges for Investors India’s economic and social landscape presents a compelling case for investors and business leaders, where rapid growth coexists with deep-seated challenges. The country’s trajectory offers a unique lens through which to examine the dynamics of development, innovati...

In this conversation, Christian Barte emphasizes the importance of understanding the foundational aspects of a business, including its assets and values, when undergoing transformation. He warns against the pitfalls of rushing into change driven by hype and buzzwords, advocating for a thoughtful approach that leverages past successes to inform future strategies. Takeaways:It’s important to underst...

The pace of new technology seems unrelenting. Vendors are on a PR war to sell their products before their massive valuations and low revenue and profitability catch up. The narrative around AI is polarized: there are those that want to burn everything in hype , and those that want to freeze everything in doom . Reality is always more nuanced. My flagship keynote focuses on first principles systems...

Modern culture treats efficiency as inevitable. Give smart people incentives, add technology, wait…and productivity appears! Brian Potter’s The Origins of Efficiency dismantles this assumption. The book’s central claim is that efficiency is not a default outcome of markets or technology, but a historically rare achievement that requires deliberate intent and execution. Efficiency emerges only when...

The modern Chief Data Officer was created to bring rigor, clarity, and discipline to how companies use data. Instead, the role frequently collapses under structural weaknesses that are obvious once stated out loud. The CDO is an “unstable particle” in the corporate C-Suite, with a short half-life. Dr. Chris Pedder , a former string physicist and experienced CDO, describes the job as “a startup ins...

Stop Saying “We Tried That Before” You can tell how dead a company is by how fast someone says, “We tried that before!” That line is the canary in the coal mine. It’s what legacy firms say when they want the world to think they’re evolving, but all they’re really doing is protecting what’s left of yesterday. I had Nicholas Goubert on the podcast, a veteran product leader who’s spent decades years...

According to veteran software engineer Lou Franco , the tech debt metaphor is holding us back. According to this metaphor, engineers took a shortcut to deliver a feature faster. They borrowed from the future. And now, unless they pay it back, they’ll incur interest payments when they try to add more features. This metaphor is flawed in two ways. The first is that most technical debt just happens b...

Pension systems across the West are under pressure. Governments are retreating, and traditional public safety nets are straining under aging populations. In Germany, for example, the pension and care insurance systems are showing cracks that experts predicted years ago. Meanwhile, financial advisors and insurance agents—the very professionals responsible for bridging this gap—are overworked, under...

For decades, legacy companies have been trapped in a linear world: buy, make, sell: * Optimize processes. * Reduce costs. * Scale production. But the data-driven digital paradigm doesn’t just reward scale. It rewards leverage: turning what you already have into nonlinear growth engines. Daniel Trabucchi and Tommaso Buganza ’s book The Digital Phoenix Effect isn’t about startups or chasing Silicon...

Note: this podcast episode is in German, but the article below is in english. 500 Million Contracts, Increasingly Less Care, and a $Billion Opportunity The German insurance industry holds roughly 500 million active insurance policy contracts . On paper, a goldmine. In reality, a ticking liability. Two-thirds of insurance brokers and agents are over 50; 10% are past retirement. A decade ago, one br...

In this conversation, Adrian Stoch, a phenomenal supply chain leader, discusses his journey from South Africa to becoming a CEO in the robotics industry, speaks with Ritavan, author of the bestseller Data Impact. They speak about Adrian's insights in the context of Ritavan's SLASOG framework. Adrian emphasizes the importance of actionable strategy, clear communication, and the need to challenge th...