Archives de catégorie : Economics

POWER AND PREDICTION d’Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb

Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines can help you prepare.

POWER AND PREDICTION:
The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence
by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb
Harvard Business Review Press, November 2022
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted many industries around the world—banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology, manufacturing, and retail. But it has only just begun its odyssey toward cheaper, better, and faster predictions that drive strategic business decisions. When prediction is taken to the max, industries transform, and with such transformation comes disruption.
What is at the root of this? In their bestselling first book, Prediction Machines, eminent economists Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb explained the simple yet game-changing economics of AI. Now, in POWER AND PREDICTION , they go deeper, examining the most basic unit of analysis: the decision. The authors explain that the two key decision-making ingredients are prediction and judgment, and we perform both together in our minds, often without realizing it. The rise of AI is shifting prediction from humans to machines, relieving people from this cognitive load while increasing the speed and accuracy of decisions.
This sets the stage for a flourishing of new decisions and has profound implications for system-level innovation. Redesigning systems of interdependent decisions takes time—many industries are in the quiet before the storm—but when these new systems emerge, they can be disruptive on a global scale. Decision-making confers power. In industry, power confers profits; in society, power confers control. This process will have winners and losers, and the authors show how businesses can leverage opportunities, as well as protect their positions.
Filled with illuminating insights, rich examples, and practical advice, POWER AND PREDICTION is the must-read guide for any business leader or policymaker on how to make the coming AI disruptions work for you rather than against you.

Ajay Agrawal is Professor of Strategic Management and the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. He is founder of the Creative Destruction Lab and the Metaverse Mind Lab and cofounder of NEXT Canada and Sanctuary.
Joshua Gans is the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Professor of Strategic Management at Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. He is Chief Economist of the Creative Destruction Lab, department editor (Strategy) at Management Science, and cofounder and managing director of Core Economic Research.
Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and Professor of Marketing at Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. He is also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, a fellow at Behavioral Economics in Action at Rotman, and a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

EARTH FOR ALL, par le Club de Rome

Now is the moment to change course towards a future that is stable. A future worth living on a finite planet. This book is the operating manual to do just that.

EARTH FOR ALL
by The Club of Rome
New Society Publishing, Summer 2022

Almost 50 years ago a group of scientists published a remarkable book that shocked the world. The book, The Limits to Growth, was a warning to humanity. Based on the results from one of the first computer models of the global economy, it showed that population and industrial growth was pushing humanity towards a cliff. Fifty years on, the scenarios explored by the authors still hold true. We know we are crossing planetary boundaries. Inequality is causing deep instabilities in societies making it impossible to make long-term decisions for the benefit of all. There seems to be no way out.
EARTH FOR ALL is an antidote to despair. Using state-of-the-art computer models combining the global economy, population, health, inequality, food, and energy, a leading group of scientists and economic thought leaders present short- term levers for long-term systems change. They show for the first time it is possible to have long-term prosperity for all if key turnarounds are put in place and foundational paradigm shifts adopted. It is possible to stabilize our planet and ensure greater wellbeing for all. And it is possible to do this in a single generation: by 2050. This is arguably the most profound scientific and economic insight of our age.
EARTH FOR ALL describes five systemic shifts that need to happen to upend poverty and inequality, lift up marginalized people, and transform our food and energy systems. Decade by decade, the book details what needs to happen, where and when. It explores eight geographical areas, each with their own distinct characteristics: from the US to Asia and Africa; and recommends key principles for the necessary economic paradigm shifts to enable a new kind of growth within limits.

The Club of Rome is an NGO founded in 1968 to address the multiple crises facing humanity and the planet. Drawing on the know-how of its 100 members – notable scientists, economists, business leaders and former politicians – the organization seeks to define comprehensive solutions to the complex, interconnected challenges of our world. Its goal is to actively advocate for paradigm and systems shifts which will enable society to emerge from our current crises, by promoting a new way of being human, within a more resilient biosphere. Its seminal, best-selling 1972 report, The Limits to Growth, alerted the world to the consequences of the interactions between human systems and the health of our planet. Since then, more than 45 Reports have reinforced and expanded that intellectual foundation.

THE REVENGE OF POWER de Moisés Naím

In his New York Times bestselling book The End of Power, Moises Naim examined power-diluting forces. Now, in THE REVENGE OF POWER, Naim turns to the trends, conditions, and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration and augmentation of power and to the clash between the forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it.

THE REVENGE OF POWER:
The Global Assault on Democracy and How to Defeat It
by Moisés Naím
St. Martin’s Press, February 2022

Moisés Naím concentrates on the three “P”s—populism, polarization, and post-truths. Using the best available data and insights taken from recent research in the social sciences, Naim reveals how the same set of strategies to consolidate power pop up again and again in places with vastly different political, economic, and social circumstances. The outcomes of these battles for power will determine if our future will be more autocratic or more democratic. These outcomes will, in turn, depend on the capacity of our democracies to survive the attacks and dirty tricks of autocratic leaders bent on weakening the checks and balances that limit their power. Naim addresses the questions at the heart of the matter: What are, in practice, those attacks and tricks? Why is power concentrating in some places while in others it is fragmenting and degrading? And the big question: what is the future of freedom?

Moisés Naím is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an internationally syndicated columnist. For over a decade he was the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine and under his leadership, the magazine was re-launched, won the National Magazine award for General Excellence three times and became one of the world’s most influential publications in international affairs. Naím also served as Venezuela’s Minister of Industry and Trade and as executive director of the World Bank. He holds a PhD from MIT and lives in Washington, DC.

BILLION DOLLAR LOSER de Reeves Wiedeman

A fast-paced, juicy narrative nonfiction title in the vein of Michael Lewis or Ben Mezrich, BILLION DOLLAR LOSER is the inside story of WeWork and its CEO, Adam Neumann, which tells the remarkable saga of one of the most audacious, and improbable, rises and falls in American business history.

BILLION DOLLAR LOSER:
The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork
by Reeves Wiedeman
Little, Brown, October 2020
(chez The Gernert Company – voir catalogue)

In its earliest days, WeWork promised the impossible: to make the American work place cool. Adam Neumann, an immigrant determined to make his fortune in the United States, landed on the idea of repurposing surplus New York office space for the burgeoning freelance class. Over the course of ten years, WeWork attracted billions of dollars from some of the most sought-after investors in the world, while spending it to build a global real estate empire that he insisted was much more than that: an organization that aspired to nothing less than « elevating the world’s consciousness. » Moving between New York real estate, Silicon Valley venture capital, and the very specific force field of spirituality and ambition erected by Adam Neumann himself, Billion Dollar Loser lays bare the internal drama inside WeWork. Based on more than two hundred interviews, this book chronicles the breakneck speed at which WeWork’s CEO built and grew his company along with Neumann’s relationship to a world of investors, including Masayoshi Son of Softbank, who fueled its chaotic expansion into everything from apartment buildings to elementary schools. Culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to WeWork’s botched IPO and Neumann’s dramatic ouster, Wiedeman exposes the story of the company’s desperate attempt to secure the funding it needed in the final moments of a decade defined by excess. Billion Dollar Loser is the first book to indelibly capture the highly leveraged, all-blue-sky world of American business in President Trump’s first term, and also offers a sober reckoning with its fallout as a new era begins.

Reeves Wiedeman is a contributing editor at New York magazine, and has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Harper’s, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn but still calls Kansas City home.

ZCONOMY de Jason R. Dorsey & Denise Villa

The most complete and authoritative guide to Gen Z, describing how leaders must adapt their employment, sales and marketing, product, and growth strategies to attract and keep this important new generation of customers, employees and trendsetters.

ZCONOMY:
How Gen Z Will Change the Future of Business―and What to Do About It
by Jason R. Dorsey & Denise Villa
Harper Business, September 2020

Gen Z changes everything. Today’s businesses are not built to sell and market the way Gen Z shops and buys, or to recruit and employ Gen Z the way they find and keep jobs. Leaders need answers now as Gen Z is the fastest growing generation of employees and the most important group of consumer trendsetters. The companies that quickly and comprehensively adapt to Gen Z thinking will be the winners for the next twenty years. Those that don’t will be the losers or become extinct. ZCONOMY is the comprehensive survival guide on how leaders must understand and embrace Generation Z. Researched and written by Dr. Denise Villa and Jason Dorsey from The Center for Generational Kinetics, the insights in ZCONOMY are based on their extensive research—they’ve led more than 60 generational studies—and their work with more than 500 companies around the world. In ZCONOMY, Dr. Villa and Dorsey answer: Who is Gen Z? What do employers, marketers, and sales leaders need to know? And, most importantly, what should leaders do now?

Jason Dorsey has been featured as a generational expert on 60 Minutes, The Early Show, and 200 more television interviews. His clients include many of the biggest brands in the world, from Four Seasons Hotels and Mercedes-Benz to Taco Bell and Discover. Dorsey has served on the board of both public and private companies, including Ultimate Software which was acquired for approximately $11 billion. As a keynote speaker, he has received more than 1,000 standing ovations around the world from audiences as large as 16,000.
Denise Villa, PhD, is the CEO and visionary behind The Center for Generational Kinetics (CGK), the leading Gen Z and generational research, speaking, and consulting firm. CGK works with over 100 clients around the world each year, ranging from financial services and global retailers to pioneering technology companies. The firm’s specialty is research that enables leaders at established brands to adapt to win new generations while teaching emerging companies how to quickly leverage generational change to grow faster.