Capitalogix

A Look At Trade Blocs

The Global Economy is more complex than I could ever explain in a single blog post. But one of the simplest ideas to understand is that trade and commerce are the foundation for the Global Economy. 

Trade between states, nations, and continents is how you end up with innovation, global increases in prosperity, and resistance to the consequences of famine, natural disasters, and even pandemics. 

But, the wants and power dynamics of these different entities can get complicated. There are many intergovernmental trade barriers.

That's where trade blocs come in ... Two you likely recognize would be NAFTA (now USMCA) and the EU.

Trade blocs are meant to reduce trade barriers between participating entities but are sometimes controversial for their potential consequences. For example, they can result in rival groups, overly benefit certain countries, and potentially place undue pressure on certain exports. 

In late 2020, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was signed and creates the largest trade bloc in history - accounting for over 30% of global GDP and population. Visual Capitalist put together an infographic about RCEP's formation and likely implications. 

 

via visualcapitalist

The agreement isn't fully ratified (it is set to be fully launched by early 2022). Regardless, it will impact the global stage and create approximately $209B of income increase per year.

Despite all the rules and benefits that RCEP will have for its 15 nations, it doesn't contain any provisions for labor unions, environmental protection, or government subsidies. 

As China continues to race against America to be the largest global superpower, the RCEP is a powerful tool in its arsenal.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 13th, 2021

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Blue Origin Auctions Seat on First Spaceflight with Jeff Bezos for $28 Million. (CNBC)
• This is Why There are No Mosquitoes at Disney World. (Hunker)
• There's a Stark Red-Blue Divide When It Comes to States' Vaccination Rates. (NPR)
• Vladimir Putin's Time in Power, Compared to Other World Leaders. (Barrons)
• He's Heckled Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. Now He's the First Fan in the NBA Hall of Fame. (Vice)

 

Trading Links:

• G7 Leaders to Announce Plan to Phase Out Gasoline Cars. (Axios)
• UN Says Cost of Food at Highest Level in Over a Decade. (BBC)
• The Perfect Storm Making Everything You Need More Expensive. (CNN)
• Inflation Scare? Look At This Chart Before Freaking Out. (MarketWatch)
• Nvidia CEO: We're Moving Towards a Crypto Metaverse. (Decrypt)

The Right People To Raise Your Thinking

There's a popular quote by Jim Rohn that states that you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

I think there's a lot of truth to that statement, but I also think it's true of larger groups. 

The people and groups you spend time with influence who you are in the moment and over time. We all act differently within different groups of people, and that's part of why surrounding yourself with the right people is so important.

You can see this when you visit your childhood home after many years, or spend time with your parents, or visit your old college. It is easy to revert to who you were when you were most influenced by that person or environment. 

A few weeks ago, I spent a couple of hours speaking to Dan Sullivan and Steven Krein to record two podcasts.  The first was about building your own future and the second discusses surrounding yourself with the right people.  Here is a link to listen to the second podcast, "The Right People to Raise Your Thinking."

 

 

For decades I have believed that you can predict a lot about your future based on who you choose to spend your present with.

That is why I think participation in quality peer groups is critical. Peer groups help us set higher standards for our behavior, aim higher in our aspirations, and they help us stay better focused and committed to big-picture goals.

I belong to several executive and business leader peer groups — groups that double as advisory boards, counselor’s offices, and idea factories. They allow me to see, hear, and discuss things I don't normally think about, talk about, or even notice.  Peer groups bring blind spots to my attention and keep me fully connected to trends that are transforming the world on a global scale.

I love going to Strategic Coach because it has a unique approach to challenging people about how they think.  After years in the program, the frameworks have unconsciously become a part of how I work and live day-to-day. 

If I could challenge you to do one thing based on the lessons in this podcast, I'd encourage you to lay out the framework for where you will be in 25 years. Who do you want to be? How do you want to live? What are you committed to building?  Who are you going to be spending more or less time with?

The next part is easy. With those things in mind, start taking steps in the right direction today. 

Onwards!

Getting To Next: How Thoughts Become Things

Two weeks ago, I introduced Innovation Activity Centers which are the building blocks for my technology adoption model.

Today, I have a video and a worksheet for you that goes into the overarching Technology Adoption Model Framework. It explains how thoughts become things and how ideas scale with respect to capability, audience, and monetization.

The four base stages of this framework are: Capability –> Prototype –> Product –> Platform. 

It's a great use of 20 minutes. Check it out.

 

 

While the Technology Adoption Model Framework stages are important, the ultimate takeaway is that you don't have to predict what's coming, only how human nature works in response to the capabilities in front of them.

It's a bit cliche, but to paraphrase Wayne Gretzky, you just have to skate to where you think the puck is going to be. 

Desire fuels commerce.  As money fuels progress, desire grows ... and so does the money funding that path. As such, the path forward is relatively easy to imagine.

This isn't about predicting specific technologies, but rather about the capabilities people will want.  I think of it as anticipating the natural path.  It is easier to ride the wave than it is to fight nature.

Each stage is really about the opportunity to scale desire and adoption.

It isn't really about building the technology, rather it is about supporting the desire.

If you understand what is coming, you don't have to build it, but you can figure out where you want to build something that will benefit from it.

This model is fractal.  It works on many levels of magnification or iteration.

What first looks like a product is later seen as a prototype for something bigger.

For example, as a Product transforms into a Platform, it becomes almost like an industry of its own.  Consequently, it becomes the seed for a new set of Capabilities, Prototypes, and Products.

SpaceX's goal to get to Mars feels like their North Star right now ... but once it's achieved, it becomes the foundation for new goals.

This Framework helps you validate capabilities before sinking resources into them. 

In the video, I walk you through several examples of companies, their innovations, and how they fit into each stage. I even used Capitalogix as an example. 

I'm also attaching a fillable PDF of the form we used so that you can run through this with your business as well. 

As I continue to refine and work with this framework, I look forward to improving it and sharing it with you all. 

As the world continues to change faster and more dramatically, this framework will help you anticipate changes, and it will also help you take advantage of them. 

If you have any questions or comments about the idea, or how to implement it, feel free to reach out. 

Onwards! 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 6th, 2021

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Benevolent Bots Are Suckers – Why A.I. Should Be Afraid of Us. (NYT)
• Microsoft's First GPT-3 Product Hints at the Commercial Future of OpenAI. (TheNextWeb)
• Netflix Secret Codes: How to Access Hidden TV Shows and Movies on Service. (Independent)
• Physics' Greatest Mystery: Michio Kaku Explains the God Equation. (BigThink)
• Scientists Gene Edit Mice to Live 23 Percent Longer. (Futurism)

 

 

Trading Links:

• Where Did 1.5 Million Cable Customers Go Last Quarter? Here. (MotleyFool)
• Technology Changes - But Fear and Greed Never Do. (HowardLindzon)
• Higher Interest Rates Would Be Good for the Country, Treasury Secretary Yellen Says. (CNBC)
• A Stealthy Growth Correction. (HumbleStudentOfTheMarkets)
• The Future of Money: The Digital Currency Revolution is Here, and May Sweep Away 5,000 Years of Monetary History. (Globe&Mail)

 

 

 

Make News Beautiful Again

My mother watches the news religiously. To her credit, she watches a variety of sources and creates her own takeaways based on them. Regardless, there's a common theme in all the sources she watched – they focus on fear or shock-inducing stories with a negative bias. As you might guess, I hear it when I talk with her.

While I value being informed, I also value things that nourish or make you stronger (as opposed to things that make you weak or less hopeful).

Negativity Sells. 

Sure, news sources throw in the occasional feel-good story as a pattern interrupt ... but their focus skews negative.  History shows that stories about improvement or the things that work simply don't grab eyeballs, attention, or ratings consistently.

The reality is that negativity sells. If everything were great all the time, people wouldn't need to buy as many products, they wouldn't need to watch the news, and this cycle wouldn't continue.

It's worth acknowledging and understanding the perils our society is facing, but it's also worth focusing on the ways humanity is expanding and improving.

As a brief respite from the unending doom and gloom of mainstream media, Information Is Beautiful has a section of their site focused on "Beautiful News".

It's a collection of simple data visualizations for positive trends, it's updated daily, and can be sorted by topic.

 

Beautiful News via Information Is Beautiful

If you're looking for more "good news", here's a list of 10 sources focusing on good news. 

The Law and Flaw of Averages

The law of averages is a principle that supposes most future events are likely to balance any past deviation from a presumed average.

Take, for example, flipping a coin. Should you get 5 "Heads" in a row, you'll assume the next one must be "Tails" despite the fact that each flip has a 50/50 chance of landing on either. 

Even from this example, you can tell it's a flawed law. While there are reasonable mathematical uses of this law, in everyday life, this "law" mostly represents wishful thinking. 

It's also one of the most common fallacies seen in gamblers and traders. 

Perhaps you heard the story about how the U.S. Air Force discovered the 'flaw' of averages by creating cockpits based on very complex mathematics surrounding the average height, width, arm length, etc. of over 4,000 pilots. Despite engineering the cockpit to precise specifications, pilots crashed their planes on a too regular basis. 

The reason?  With the benefit of hindsight, they learned that very few of those 4,000 pilots were actually "average". Ultimately, the Air Force re-engineered the cockpit and fixed the problem. 

It's a good reminder that 'facts' can lie, and assumptions and interpretations are dangerous. It's why I prefer taking decisive action on something known, rather than taking tentative actions about something guessed. 

 

via ReasonTV

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - May 30th, 2021

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Michio Kaku On His Lifelong Search For The God Equation'. (PBS)
• The Human Genome Has Finally Been Completely Sequenced After 20 Years. (NewScientist)
• Map Shows Which Counties are Home to the Highest Number of Excessive Drinkers in the United States. (FOX News)
• Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack? (NewYorker)
• Chicago’s Predictive Policing Program Told a Man He Would Be Involved with a Shooting – But Didn't Know If He Would Be the Shooter or the Victim. (TheVerge)

 

 

Trading Links:

• Billionaire David Rubenstein Says 'Unrealistic' To Think Government Will Stop Cryptocurrency From Being What Investors Want. (News)
• Why Amazon Bought MGM and What It Means for Apple. (TheInformation)
• Economic Growth In a Time of Disequilibrium. (KPMG)
• Is Inflation Coming? If So, How To Protect Your Portfolio? (SeekingAlpha)
• Legendary Investor Jeremy Grantham Called the Dot-Com Bubble and the 2008 Financial Crisis. He Told Us How 4 Indicators Have Lined Up for What Could Be 'The Biggest Loss of Perceived Value From Assets that We Have Ever Seen.' (Insider)

The Ever Expanding Space Industry

Elon Musk is an interesting guy ... and SpaceX and his other projects are exciting companies that have the potential to 'leave a dent in the Universe.' But he is only one player in a surprisingly deep field. 

SpaceTech Analytics put out a great report on the overall landscape of the growing space industry including many infographics and benchmarks to help you chunk information and analyze it (as a relative layman). 

• One Pager
• 30-Page Teaser
• 165-Page Full Report

via SpaceTech Analytics

Here are some highlights of the reports if you don't want to spend the time:

• There are over 10,000 space industry companies globally, and the U.S. has the most with 5,582 space-focused companies (which is almost 10x of the UK who is in second place) 
• Money invested in the industry has passed $4 Trillion USD for the first time ever as a result of the increased competition and attention
• Navigation/mapping, cloud solutions, and manufacturing are the biggest sectors by company density
• And, orbital delivery for SpaceX's starship was approximately $500/kg compared to $20,000/kg on NASA's space shuttle in large part due to improvements in launch technology

It's fun to look at SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, or Blue Origin ... but it's encouraging to see so many meaningful players and projects. 

We take for granted the immense phase shift in technology. You have more computing power in your pocket than we first used to go to the moon. 

As humans, we're wired to think locally and linearly. We evolved to live our lives in small groups, to fear outsiders, and to stay in a general region until we die. We're not wired to think about the billions and billions of individuals on our planet, or the rate of technological growth - or the minuteness of that all with regard to the expanse of space.  

However, today's reality necessitates we think about the world, our impact, and what's now possible for us.

The space industry has a lot of potential to enhance the quality of life on earth, without expecting populations to leave the planet. 

Many of our greatest innovations came as a result of the pursuit of space travel. A recent example can be seen with SpaceX's Starlink striving to give people without access to stable internet a long-term solution. 

Space was a major inflection point for today's innovation, but now we can look toward A.I., new medical technologies, and so much more. 

It's hard to comprehend the scale of the universe and the scale of our potential ... but that's what makes it worth exploring!

 

Carl Sagan via  YouTube

 

Innovation Activity Centers

In many of my recent talks, I've been focusing on a technology adoption model for entrepreneurs. It is a framework that explains how thoughts become things and how ideas scale with respect to capability, audience, and monetization.

The four base stages are: Capability –> Prototype –> Product –> Platform. 

You can listen to me talk about it in more detail on my recent podcasts, I'm also working on a separate video about this. 

From a different perspective, each stage of the Framework requires the following Innovation Activity Centers. 

I shot a video going into more detail. Check it out. 

 

 

Understanding the Technology Adoption Framework and the Innovation Activity Centers makes it easier to understand and anticipate the capabilities, constraints, and milestones that define the path forward.

We are making lots of progress refining these models, and they are the basis for our plans to expand our Amplified Intelligence Platform.

Ultimately, frameworks aren't important if you aren't using them. 

If you have questions about this, or how you might use these models, feel free to reach out to me.