The Emerging Markets Century, Antoine van Agtmael

Each year we are buying more planes from Brazil's Embraer, refrigerators from China's Haier appliance maker, smart cell phones from Taiwan's HTC, gas from Russia's Gazprom and IT services from India's Infosys. Consider this: 58 of the Fortune 500 global companies are headquartered in emerging markets. Many, if not most of the world class firms are going to come not from the new economy, but from the new economies of Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and perhaps even Africa. In the 19th century, Aristocrats looked down on entrepreneurs and the emerging middle class, without understanding that a new era had begun. It is time to face a strange reality and exploit its opportunities - the new powerhouses of the world's economies are going to come from emerging markets NOT the 1st world. The Emerging Markets Century tells the stories of how 25 companies made it to the top, while others in the same industries and countries fell away. It details what it takes to become a world class company in an emerging market. This book is necessary for anyone who wants to understand the true magnitude of the change underway in the global economy today.

The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A "Black Swan" is a highly improbable event with three characteristics: It is unpredictable, it carries a massive impact; and after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable than it was. Taleb, a mathematical trader and a university professor counts the astonishing success of Google as well as 9/11 as Black Swans, among a host of other well known events. He explains how the world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown and the very improbable, and how the future will be increasingly less predictable. All the while we spend our time engaged in the known and the repeated. As the world gets more connected, Black Swans become more consequential. Expert advice is often useless. Most forecasting is pseudoscience. You can retrain yourself to overcome your cognitive biases and to appreciate randomness. But is it not easy. You can hedge against negative Black Swans while benefiting from positive ones. Every now and then I come across a book that radically changes the way I think. This was definitely one. Come and hear why…..