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Economy

Why The Entire Economy Will Be Run By Digital Giants – Forbes

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In his new book, Everybody Wants to Rule the World (HarperCollins, July 2021), business analyst Ray Wang describes the future of business. His book predicts that by 2050, the global marketplace will comprise around 50 giant duopolies. In each market, there will be only two dominant giants.

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Sector after sector, writes Wang, has already become “a bloodbath” with one-or-two winner-takes-all. “Facebook dominated social media. Amazon took over commerce. Google ruled search. Netflix won the streaming wars. Add the global COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, and the gaps between winners and losers not only widened, but the pace of change also accelerated.” And this, says Wang, is just the beginning.

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In effect, Wang foresees that the same economic and technological forces that created today’s handful of digital giants will work its way throughout the whole global economy. This should be not a surprise to any who understand why digital assets tend inexorably towards winner-take-all outcomes. (If Google offers the best search, why should I use anything else?)

Wang argues that we all need to “understand the digital giants’ DNA, how they operate, why they continue to build exponential barriers to entry, and where their next foray will take them.” In business, the rise of duopolies, says Wang, “represents a life-or-death challenge for your company—no matter what sector you’re in or how long you’ve held a secure position.” In the public sector, regulators need to understand them to effectively regulate them.

Whatever Happened To ‘Digital Transformations’?

Wang notes that “the most popular business buzz-phrase of the 2010s was “digital transformation.” Wang himself led the charge to help firms with their digital transformations. But it didn’t work for most firms. “We did all the right things,” he writes. “We transformed business models. We changed engagement. We were supposed to come out winners. And yet only a few of us made it past the finish line. Suddenly successfully embracing digital transformation was not enough.”

It turned out that the game itself had changed. “Our competition was no longer whom we thought it was,” writes Wang. “Even as direct competitors fall by the wayside and pose less of a threat, competition from nontraditional players continues to increase. In many cases, adjacent value chains compete head on with our companies.”

The New Game: Data-Driven Digital Networks (DDDNs)

The new game, says Wang, involves a recognition that the most important asset in the digital age is data. The winners already are, and will continue to be, those who are able to exploit data in what Wang calls Data-Driven Digital Networks or DDDNs.

“DDDNs apply these massive digital feedback loops to all of their stakeholders — customers, employees, suppliers, partners — and use data – driven insights to mitigate risk, identify new opportunities, improve operational efficiency, anticipate customer demands, and drive dynamic pricing. For example, Google can automatically and dynamically adjust ad pricing based on the popularity of a search term or engagement in a topic. Amazon can identify which routes and markets to expand based on logistic costs and profit margins. By relying on technologies such as AI and the cloud at scale, DDDNs automate many data-driven decisions—such as what products and services to promote in what markets and at what price. This gives them an unfair competitive advantage and makes it even harder for non-DDDNs to succeed.”

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Only Three Options

There are only three options for business, says Wang.

Option 1: Become a data-driven digital network and be one of the lucky-few victorious firms over the next decade. “It won’t be easy, but it is doable. You’ll need to innovate both technology and business models. It will require mustering resources, willpower, and ingenuity to attain data supremacy…. Without a business model that generates huge amounts of data at every decision point, you’re dead on arrival.” This in turn will require “benevolent dictator” governance.

Option 2: If that is too difficult, you can “join a coalition of smaller players in your industry that can collaborate on creating a DDDN. These coalitions will play an increasingly important role in enabling competition against the digital monopolies and duopolies.” As examples, Wang cites “Microsoft’s attempt to challenge Amazon through partnerships with retailers like Walmart, Walgreens, and Kroger” and the American Booksellers Association, a coalition of independent local bookstores. Wang foresees that most firms “will choose option two—to partner with others to build a DDDN—to get started. But, sadly, many will not make the investments in resources and money necessary to succeed.”

Option 3: There is no option 3, says Wang. “Can I choose to quietly run my business in my small niche, without the backing of a DDDN and without provoking the giants? The answer,” says Wang, “is no…Like it or not, the only options are to build your own duopoly, join a coalition that can hold its own against the dominant DDDNs in your market, or give up and wait for the grim reaper.”

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Social Implications

“While the massive rise of digital duopolies will foster the next wave of disruption and innovation, it will also leave behind a path of destruction. Why? Digital duopolies will usher an era of super-efficient yet extreme capitalism.”

“Policymakers and responsible organizations building duopolies,” says Wang, “must take steps to keep fair competition alive. Successful duopolies will have to abide by guidelines that require: Open technology standards that prevent market lock-in and integration capabilities. Access rights that ensure smaller players can compete on their own merits without being duly excluded. Personal data ownership to ensure users have control over consent and usage of their personal information, transaction history, and other metadata.”

Business implications

“More than 90% of the current Fortune 500,” says Wang, “will be merged, acquired, or go bankrupt by 2050 in deals that will add up to quadrillions of investment capital. The rich (measured in capital, customers, technology, talent, and data) will get richer, and everyone else will have to scrounge for scraps.”

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“Building a DDDN is hard,” says Wang. “It requires a combination of massive computing power, products or services that engage users, AI, and billions in capital investment—a high barrier to entry that ensures only a few players in any market succeed in doing so. If a DDDN already has a foothold in a market, the power of its virtuous digital data feedback loop makes it harder and harder for competitors to catch up to it. Even if they are not already in a market, DDDNs can use their dominance in another market and their value chains to enter new ones much more easily. Most of their competitors are taken by surprise and fail to react.”

Firms attempting to create a DDDN will need to upend their business thinking as shown in Figure 3.1.

“Even those who try to mount a defense have found it an uphill battle, especially since their ability to do the very thing that could save them — investing in innovation — has been largely quashed by a hostile investment environment.”

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“The story of how established companies got hung out to dry by investors begins in the 2010s,” says Wang. “That decade saw the financial markets skewed by the concentration of more and more investment capital among the ‘mega-investor’ class. The mega-investors who should have been pushing the Fortune 500 to invest more in digital transformation to compete against these DDDNs, instead became more conservative, demanding higher and higher quarterly profits.

There is a risk that firms attempting to create a DDDN they will fall into seven well-known traps, as shown in Figure 3.2.

See part 2 of this article: (coming soon) an interview with Ray Wang in which we discuss the further implications of this illuminating book.

And read also:

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Why Agile Is Eating The World

Why Digital Transformations are Failing

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Economy

Britain's economy went into recession last year, official figures confirm – The Globe and Mail

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People walk over London Bridge, in London, on Oct. 25, 2023.SUSANNAH IRELAND/Reuters

Britain’s economy entered a shallow recession last year, official figures confirmed on Thursday, leaving Prime Minister Rishi Sunak with a challenge to reassure voters that the economy is safe with him before an election expected later this year.

Gross domestic product shrank by 0.1 per cent in the third quarter and by 0.3 per cent in the fourth, unchanged from preliminary estimates, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Thursday.

The figures will be disappointing for Mr. Sunak, who has been accused by the opposition Labour Party – far ahead in opinion polls – of overseeing “Rishi’s recession.”

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“The weak starting point for GDP this year means calendar-year growth in 2024 is likely to be limited to less than 1 per cent,” said Martin Beck, chief economic adviser at EY ITEM Club.

“However, an acceleration in momentum this year remains on the cards.”

Britain’s economy has shown signs of starting 2024 on a stronger footing, with monthly GDP growth of 0.2 per cent in January, and unofficial surveys suggesting growth continued in February and March.

Tax cuts announced by finance minister Jeremy Hunt and expectations of interest-rate cuts are likely to help the economy in 2024.

However, Britain remains one of the slowest countries to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of last year, its economy was just 1 per cent bigger than in late 2019, with only Germany faring worse among Group of Seven nations.

The economy grew just 0.1 per cent in all of 2023, its weakest performance since 2009, excluding the peak-pandemic year of 2020.

GDP per person, which has not grown since early 2022, fell by 0.6 per cent in the fourth quarter and 0.7 per cent across 2023.

Sterling was little changed against the dollar and the euro after the data release.

The Bank of England (BOE) has said inflation is moving toward the point where it can start cutting rates. It expects the economy to grow by just 0.25 per cent this year, although official budget forecasters expect a 0.8-per-cent expansion.

BOE policy maker Jonathan Haskel said in an interview reported in Thursday’s Financial Times that rate cuts were “a long way off,” despite dropping his advocacy of a rise at last week’s meeting.

Thursday’s figures from the ONS also showed 0.7 per cent growth in households’ real disposable income, flat in the previous quarter.

Thomas Pugh, an economist at consulting firm RSM, said the increase could prompt consumers to increase their spending and support the economy.

“Consumer confidence has been improving gradually over the last year … as the impact of rising real wages filters through into people’s pockets, even though consumers remain cautious overall,” Mr. Pugh said.

Britain’s current account deficit totalled £21.18-billion ($36.21-billion) in the fourth quarter, slightly narrower than a forecast of £21.4-billion ($36.6-billion) shortfall in a Reuters poll of economists, and equivalent to 3.1 per cent of GDP, up from 2.7 per cent in the third quarter.

The underlying current account deficit, which strips out volatile trade in precious metals, expanded to 3.9 per cent of GDP.

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How will a shrinking population affect the global economy? – Al Jazeera English

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Falling fertility rates could bring about a transformational demographic shift over the next 25 years.

It has been described as a demographic catastrophe.

The Lancet medical journal warns that a majority of countries do not have a high enough fertility rate to sustain their population size by the end of the century.

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The rate of the decline is uneven, with some developing nations seeing a baby boom.

The shift could have far-reaching social and economic impacts.

Enormous population growth since the industrial revolution has put enormous pressure on the planet’s limited resources.

So, how does the drop in births affect the economy?

And regulators in the United States and the European Union crack down on tech monopolies.

The gender gap in tech narrows.

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John Ivison: Canada's economy desperately needs shock treatment after this Liberal government – National Post

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Lack of business investment is the main culprit. Canadians are digging holes with shovels while our competitors are buying excavators

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It speaks to the seriousness of the situation that the Bank of Canada is not so much taking the gloves off as slipping lead into them.

Senior deputy governor, Carolyn Rogers, came as close to wading into the political arena as any senior deputy governor of the central bank probably should in her speech in Halifax this week.

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But she was right to sound the alarm about a subject — Canada’s waning productivity — on which the federal government’s performance has been lacklustre at best.

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Productivity has fallen in six consecutive quarters and is now on a par with where it was seven years ago.

Lack of business investment is the main culprit.

In essence, Canadians are digging holes with shovels while many of our competitors are buying excavators.

“You’ve seen those signs that say, ‘in emergency, break glass.’ Well, it’s time to break the glass,” Rogers said.

She was explicit that government policy is partly to blame, pointing out that businesses need more certainty to invest with confidence. Government incentives and regulatory approaches that change year to year do not inspire confidence, she said.

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The government’s most recent contribution to the competitiveness file — Bill C-56, which made a number of competition-related changes — is a case in point. It was aimed at cracking down on “abusive practices” in the grocery industry that no one, including the bank in its own study, has been able to substantiate. Rather than encouraging investment, it added a political actor — the minister of industry — to the market review process. The Business Council of Canada called the move “capricious,” which was Rogers’s point.

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While blatant price-fixing is rare, the lack of investment is a product of the paucity of competition in many sectors, where Canadian companies protected from foreign competition are sitting on fat profit margins and don’t feel compelled to invest to make their operations more efficient. “Competition can make the whole economy more productive,” said Rogers.

The Conservatives now look set to make this an election issue. Ontario MP Ryan Williams has just released a slick 13-minute video that makes clear his party intends to act in this area.

Using the Monopoly board game as a prop, Williams, the party’s critic for pan-Canadian trade and competition, claims that in every sector, monopolies and oligopolies reign supreme, resulting in lower investment, lower productivity, higher prices, worse service, lower wages and more wealth inequality.

(As an aside, it was a marked improvement on last year’s “Justinflation” rap video.)

Williams said that Canadians pay among the highest cell phone prices in the world and that Rogers, Telus and Bell are the priciest carriers, bar none. The claim has some foundation: in a recent Cable.co.uk global league table that compared the average price of one gigabyte, Canada was ranked 216th of 237 countries at US$5.37 (noticeably, the U.S. was ranked even more expensive at US$6).

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Williams noted that two airlines control 80 per cent of the market, even though Air Canada was ranked dead last of all North American airlines for timeliness.

He pointed out that six banks control 87 per cent of Canada’s mortgage market, while five grocery stores — Sobeys, Metro, Loblaw, Walmart and Costco — command a similar dominance of the grocery market.

“Competition is dying in Canada,” Williams said. “The federal government has made things worse by over-regulating airlines, banks and telecoms to actually protect monopolies and keep new players out.”

So far, so good.

The Conservatives will “bring back home a capitalist economy” — a market that does not protect monopolies and creates more competition, in the form of Canadian companies that will provide new supply and better prices.

That sounds great. But at the same time, the Conservative formula for fixing things appears to involve more government intervention, not less.

Williams pointed out the Conservatives opposed RBC buying HSBC’s Canadian operations, WestJet buying Sunwing and Rogers buying Shaw. The party would oppose monopolies from buying up the competition, he said.

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The real solution is to let the market do its work to bring prices down. But that is a more complicated process than Williams lets on.

Back in 2007, when Research in Motion was Canada’s most valuable company, the Harper government appointed a panel of experts, led by former Nortel chair Lynton “Red” Wilson, to address concerns that the corporate sector was being “hollowed out” by foreign takeovers, following the sale of giants Alcan, Dofasco and Inco.

The “Compete to Win” report that came out in June 2008 found that the number of foreign-owned firms had remained relatively unchanged, but recommended 65 changes to make Canada more competitive.

The Harper government acted on the least-contentious suggestions: lowering corporate taxes, harmonizing sales taxes with a number of provinces and making immigration more responsive to labour markets.

But it did not end up liberalizing the banking, broadcasting, aviation or telecom markets, as the report suggested (ironically, it was a Liberal transport minister, Marc Garneau, who raised foreign ownership levels of air carriers to 49 per cent from 25 per cent in 2018).

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The point is, Canada has a competition problem but solving it requires taking on vested interests. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has indicated he is willing to do that, calling corporate lobbyists “utterly useless” and saying he will focus on Canadian workers, not corporate interests.

“My daily obsession will be about what is good for the working-class people in this country,” he said in Vancouver earlier this month.

Even opening up sectors to foreign competition is no guarantee that investors will come. There are no foreign ownership restrictions in the grocery market (in addition to the five supermarkets listed above, there is Amazon-owned Whole Foods). When the Competition Bureau concluded last year that there was a “modest but meaningful” increase in food prices, it recommended Ottawa encourage a foreign-owned player to enter the Canadian market. It was a recommendation adopted by Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, to no avail thus far.

But it is clear from the Bank’s warning that the Canadian economy requires some shock treatment.

Robert Scrivener, the chairman of Bell and Northern Telecom in the 1970s, called Canada a nation of overprotected underachievers. That is even more true now than it was back then.

It’s time to break the glass.

jivison@criffel.ca

Get even more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

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