Great Inventors ~ Migrants Making America...

Inclusive Economies ~ Spring 2020 @ MIT D-Lab

Together with colleagues Kate Mytty and Libby McDonald, I'm co-teaching the Inclusive Economies seminar at MIT this Spring 2020 every Wed morning starting Feb 5th from 9:30-11:30a in N51-310, the D-Lab classroom area!

We explore how innovations and market mechanisms can benefit humanity by rallying impact investments, engaging participants cooperatively, boosting equity and resilience, and broadening prosperity. We look at market mechanisms for maximizing participation, choice, and growth; impact investing approaches which are socially responsible and include metrics that matter; cooperative and mutual ownership structures for shared gains; equitable citizen participation in basic and natural resource wealth; and the role of new technologies and methods towards boosting affordability, accessibility, and overall inclusive prosperity.

Doing Business ~ Global Ease Rankings Map...

Visual Capitalist helps us understand which countries support entrepreneurship and business and which do not, much to the suffering of their peoples...

Medieval Trade Routes ~ Well Beyond Silk...

Medieval Trade Routes zoomable map!

Inclusive Economies ~ Spring'19 D-Lab Seminar

Together with colleagues Kate Mytty and Libby McDonald, I'm co-teaching the Inclusive Economies seminar this Spring 2019 every Wed morning starting Feb 6th from 9:30-11:30a in N51-350, the D-Lab classroom area! We explore how innovations and market mechanisms can benefit humanity by rallying impact investments, engaging participants cooperatively, boosting equity and resilience, and broadening prosperity. We look at market mechanisms for maximizing participation, choice, and growth; impact investing approaches which are socially responsible and include metrics that matter; cooperative and mutual ownership structures for shared gains; equitable citizen participation in basic and natural resource wealth; and the role of new technologies and methods towards boosting affordability, accessibility, and overall inclusive prosperity.

Buffett's Bazillions ~ Berkshire's Investments...

Visual Capitalist groks zillionaire Warren Buffett's investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway!

Global Exports ~ Physical Stuff Sold Internationally

HowMuch maps the Global Export Economy in One Map... 

"We got our numbers from the World Trade Organization [...] The WTO tracks the total value of physical goods each country sends across its borders. Remember, these numbers exclude services -- we are only focused on physical items. To create our map, we changed the size of the country depending on the value of exports, and we likewise added a shade of blue for easy reference. This approach highlights the outliers and identifies several key trends."

Biggest of US ~ Market Caps over Decades

Metrocosm spots a century of America's 10 largest companies compared by market capitalization...

Global Incomes ~ Distribution Change over Time...

Thanks to Daniel Mitchell from International Liberty for spotlighting a great chart by Professor Max Roser of Oxford using Gapminder data showing the distribution of income globally at key point in recent history...

"There are three takeaways from this data. The first conclusion [...] is that the world is getting richer. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. That’s wonderful news. The second conclusion, as seen by the red section of the chart, is that a modest bit of reform in India and China has paid big dividends (and, given the success of Indian-Americans and Chinese-Americans, I imagine those nations could become much richer with additional market-friendly reform). But I want to focus today on a third conclusion, which is that pro-growth policies are the best way to help the poor, not redistribution driven by a fixation on inequality."

Global Pie ~ $74T Economy in One Chart...

Jeff Desjardins at Visual Capitalist shares The $74 Trillion Global Economy in One Chart...

"The full circle, known as a Voronoi Diagram, represents the entirety of the $74 trillion global economy in nominal terms. Meanwhile, each country’s segment is sized accordingly to their percentage of global GDP output. Continents are also grouped together and sorted by color."

P.S. The actual graphing was done by HowMuch.net

Poverty Inc ~ Moving Beyond the Aid Industry...

Check out trailer for Poverty Inc documentary expose...

"The film examines the rise of the multibillion industry of charity and aid through the lens of developing world entrepreneurs and working parents, who can often be displaced in their roles as the rightful protagonists of their own story of development. The West has positioned itself as the protagonist of development, giving rise to a vast multi-billion dollar poverty industry -- the business of doing good has never been better. Yet the results have been mixed, in some cases even catastrophic, and leaders in the developing world are growing increasingly vocal in calling for change. The film has earned over 40 film festival honors and has been selected to the "Best of Fests" category in the upcoming IDFA Amsterdam -- the biggest documentary festival in the world."

Future Commerce ~ Rebooting Money & Markets!

Together with Brian Forde from MIT’s new Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) and Media Lab colleagues Alex (Sandy) Pentland and David Shrier, we explore new financial innovations via our Future Commerce offering this Fall 2015 every Tuesday afternoon 1-2:30p starting September 15th. Participants learn how to build new businesses and translate ideas to impact, in collaboration with experienced fintech executives, entrepreneurs and thought leaders.

Students will explore emerging technologies that will disrupt existing marketplaces and financial services by spending a semester building new business models, products or technical concepts, resulting in a substantial deliverable at the end of the term.

Root Capital ~ Growing Agri-Impact Finance...

Check out Root Capital, a financing and connections-making social venture which helps small and growing rural agri-businesses thrive long-term, socially, economically, and sustainably. See especially their Timeline and here's founder Willy Foote sharing how it all started... And a summary of their approach... And a Skoll World Forum Uncommon Heroes mini-docu on Root...

Capitalist Cure ~ De Soto on Unlikely Heroes...

Peruvian economist and founder of ILD Hernando de Soto writes in the WSJournal about The Capitalist Cure for Terrorism...

"Military might alone won’t defeat Islamic State and its ilk. The U.S. needs to promote economic empowerment. [...] Today we hear the same economic and cultural pessimism about the Arab world that we did about Peru in the 1980s. But we know better. Just as Shining Path was beaten in Peru, so can terrorists be defeated by reforms that create an unstoppable constituency for rising living standards in the Middle East and North Africa. To make this agenda a reality, the only requirements are a little imagination, a hefty dose of capital (injected from the bottom up) and government leadership to build, streamline and fortify the laws and structures that let capitalism flourish. As anyone who’s walked the streets of Lima, Tunis and Cairo knows, capital isn’t the problem -- it is the solution. [...] The people of the “Arab street” want to find a place in the modern capitalist economy. But hundreds of millions of them have been unable to do so because of legal constraints to which both local leaders and Western elites are often blind. They have ended up as economic refugees in their own countries. To survive, they have cobbled together hundreds of discrete, anarchic arrangements, often called the “informal economy.” Unfortunately, that sector is viewed with contempt by many Arabs and by Western development experts, who prefer well-intended charity projects [...] All too often, the way that Westerners think about the world’s poor closes their eyes to reality on the ground. In the Middle East and North Africa, it turns out, legions of aspiring entrepreneurs are doing everything they can, against long odds, to claw their way into the middle class. And that is true across all of the world’s regions, peoples and faiths. Economic aspirations trump the overhyped “cultural gaps” so often invoked to rationalize inaction."

It's Morning in VC ~ Suster on Capital Trendscape

Mark Suster on why It’s Morning in VC...

" I am even more optimistic about venture capital than I was even a year ago. Here is a [ultra-summarized by JPB] preview of what we found & what we will publish:

1. Huge opportunities, runaway success possible; 
2. Dramatic drop in startup costs; 
3. Fast revenue scaling possible; 
4. More private market financing than before; 
5. IPOs increasingly valuable; 
6. Opportunity & Growth Funds; 

With private markets capturing more value in the future and continued disruption of every industry -- can LPs afford NOT to be long in Venture Capital?"

Undercover Bosses ~ Great Reality TV Show...

I've written about Undercover Boss before, but it's so good a concept that I had to spotlight a bunch of episodes again! And yes I know there's something a bit contrived about settings with video cameras, with bosses dispensing largesse (sometimes), and the inherent promotional nature of the show. Nevertheless, I do think it illustrates an important but otherwise near impossible connection between everyday employees and the top of these organizations. First, boss Ron Lynch from Tilted Kilt... Second, boss Joe DePinto from 7/11... Third, boss Don Fertman from Subway... Fourth, boss Dave Rife from White Castle... Fifth, boss Coby Brooks from Hooters... Finally, boss Larry O'Donnell from Waste Management...

Profitable Migration ~ Studying Remittance Capital

Michael Clemens at the Center for Global Development says It’s Time to Learn More about How Poor Families Use Migration...

"Remittances are huge -- about triple the size of foreign aid flows. That’s a big opportunity for development. But much of the research on remittances focuses on why they are primarily spent on consumption, and how governments and NGOs can get people to invest remittances. [...] Remittances are not a windfall like lottery winnings. For many low-income families, they are a return on investment. Migration is one of many financial tools they juggle to smooth income and consumption. Migration often involves a family member moving to access a different labor market, and that household is investing in an asset, bearing up-front costs for uncertain future benefits. Remittances therefore are part of the family’s [ROI]"

Fantastically important to study more! See further research.

Food Machine ~ PBS's America Revealed #1

PBS's America Revealed first episode, Food Machine...

Remit US ~ Migrants Sending $120G Home...

In Globe piece Where the money goes, nice infographic...

"The World Bank estimates that in 2011, immigrants living in America were responsible for $120 billion in remittances flowing to their home countries. The size of the circles below reflect the amount of remittances in billions..."

Stealing Africa ~ Why Poverty? on What's Right...

Why Poverty? shares Stealing Africa documentary...

"Zambia’s copper resources have not made the country rich. Virtually all Zambia’s copper mines are owned by corporations. In the last ten years, they’ve extracted copper worth $29 billion but Zambia is still ranked one of the twenty poorest countries in the world. So why hasn’t copper wealth reduced poverty in Zambia? Once again it comes down to the issue of tax, or in Zambia’s case, tax avoidance and the use of tax havens. Tax avoidance by corporations costs poor countries and estimated $160 billion a year, almost double what they receive in international aid. That’s enough to save the lives of 350,000 children aged five or under every year. For every $1 given in aid to a poor country, $10 drains out. Vital money that could help a poor country pay for healthcare, schools, pensions and infrastructure. Money that would make them less reliant on aid."