What We Are Thinking

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

There's a lot of information out there and it's hard not to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data coming at you day in and out.  While we regularly scan the political and industry news outlets, we regularly find interesting food for thought at these sources:

Aspen Institute 5 Ideas

RANE Network Newsletter

AEI Ideas

World Economic Forum

ARTICLES THAT CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION

6 Things Tech World Leaders Fear (TIME, 28 January 2019)

• The concerns of today shape the policies of tomorrow.  It is important to understand these fears - of consumers, politicians, and technology leaders, to name a few - in order to properly anticipate any potential arguments raised to new products or understand the motivating factors for any proposed regulations to new technologies.

How Our Brains Make the World (Iain McGilchrist, American Enterprise Institute, 15 January 2019)

• Understanding what drives people - what makes them happy, what makes them feel satisfied, heard - is an imperative part of engaging them whether in day to day interactions or more business policy discussions.
• Any effective and comprehensive strategy must address the different response centers of the brain appropriately.  In order to do this, it is imperative to have at least some working knowledge of how the brain operates and what different aspects of it respond to, across cultures.

Why It Pays to Declutter Your Digital Life (BBC, 6 January 2019)

• I am doing a lot of work on flow, how to achieve peak performance, and how to more readily identify your personal triggers and those of others.  The overabundance of information is a huge one and digital hoarding is becoming a very real problem for people - keeping them from thinking clearly, from prioritizing, from seeing bigger pictures as they get lost in the details.

American Workers Seek Learning and Development Programs to Close Skills Gap (Morning Consult and The Prudential, 16 December 2018)

• Skills, and the question of how to give the current and next generation of workers, the best ones is a conversation taking place around the world.  Important to understand the American perspective.

Barnier Slide for EU-UK Brexit Negotiations (European Commission, December 2017)

• This slide has been oft cited since it was drawn up to demonstrate the options in trade negotiations and has been a good resource both in understanding and putting the discussions in perspective.
• We always get a kick out of the reference of these options as the “stairway to hell.”  It’s all a matter of perspective, I guess.