For evidence that mainstream economists are taking the challenge of covid-19 seriously, look no further than the comments of Gabriela Ramos, chief of staff at the OECD, at a conference in April: “For many institutions, including the OECD, which has traditionally emphasized the need for efficiency, it is not easy to accept that we should build…
Generals always fight the last war, runs the military aphorism. Politicians have also drawn heavily from battlefield lexicon in framing the fight against covid-19, but they too are at risk of leaning on outdated concepts and responses based on past crises that bear limited resemblance to the pandemic. With a vaccine likely to be many…
The Alibaba Damo Academy is a unique hybrid research and development (R&D) facility. An academically-oriented independent science organization established in 2017 in Hangzhou, China, it is also an arms-length research affiliate of its founder, Chinese internet technology giant Alibaba. Damo’s project development pipelines are positioned around developing data-enabled technologies for fundamental business and social challenges,…
In the digital era, strong technology leadership correlates ever more closely with business revenue growth. Technology strategy, and the ability of chief technology officers to deliver it, is key to business success, not just for managing the performance and cost efficiency of enterprise technology, but to create the architecture and agility for new business models,…
In the space of a few months, covid-19 has upended economic and social activity worldwide, sending billions of people home for months on end and causing productivity to tumble. In Asia, the first region to be affected, huge disruption occurred across what have been the world’s fastest-growing economies. The Asian Development Bank forecasts that productivity…
Over the past six months, central banks and governments have unlocked financial floodgates to deal with the economic fallout of covid-19. As early as April, 106 countries had introduced or adapted social protection programs, mostly cash transfers, to help those affected by the pandemic. A McKinsey analysis of 54 countries estimates that governments had committed $10 trillion by June,…