In each business, there is a process, or a delivery system or information system, that is changing rapidly under them.
Digitization has created opportunities for everybody to accumulate information in a way they were never able to, and analyze it with a speed that just wasn't there.
Everybody is talking about synergies. You've got to take out every cost you possibly can. You have to position yourself as your services change.You have to think about in five years from now what is going to happen technologically to you. And then you do have to think about M&A or your balance sheet, and you have to think about everything in the context of, "Am I prepared to meet that challenge?".
The challenges, the changes we're talking about often seem to them like unbelievable opportunities to deliver a product quicker, better. If you can improve the quality, lower the cost, and improve the turns - and you can do that because your information systems, your delivery systems, are better because of technology - well, you see that as a wonderful opportunity to gain market share.
The investing public understands that you need to do things to position yourself.
That is the brilliant thing about the millennials. They're not obsessing about, "Hey, there is not going to be a job for me" - they're trying to take advantage of how good a life they can have without having to create so much nominal income. Income is there to create quality of life, but you can share your car and get where you want to go, and you can travel the world by couch surfing. I think they're taking advantage of deflationary forces to improve their life while not maybe having to chase the nominal money that was needed to buy a whole car, a whole house, a whole couch.
The consensus is a very dangerous thing to get complacent about.
I would point out is that most of the change over the past 5,000 years has been arithmetic, and it now logarithmic. Digitization, the whole Moore's law thing where it doubles every 18 months - that is a speed that is faster than most people are used to.
The leverage Wall Street has to change the world is greater than technology. At a very young age, you're in the room with CEOs, making critical decisions. It should be exciting. It is exciting.
I think people sense that - that there is something not right about that equation [in the USA].
I've always said this: I've never seen a Michelin three-starred restaurant that was a buffet. They usually serve à la carte. I do think the delivery of a specific service, a specific advice for a specific reason, is the way you get the equivalent of a Michelin three-starred relationship.
Without going too deep, without globalization I am not sure everyone would be able to have a supercomputer in their pocket at the low cost.
It is a very interesting world. I'm excited. It is much more optimistic than people think, and there is going to be huge job creation from all these things, and there are going to be huge life improvements.
If you're not exposing yourself to a non-consensus view somehow over the course of a day, you can reject them, but you should expose yourself to them.
By the way, I'm not sure the managing director who was 50 in 2005 understood that the job had changed - that when he or she came out of school in 1986, that it was different. How would they know? We've got to admit that.
I went to Brazil, and you get on the ground and you see it, and you could tell the government was in trouble two years ago. This was just going to sweep the government aside, and it was a force you could feel. Brexit, the same thing.
In most industries, technological change is happening at a rapid rate. I find it is happening in different ways to every industry in the world, and positioning yourself for that, and trying to get ahead of that, is a big conversation right now. Digitization has created opportunities for everybody to accumulate information in a way they were never able to, and analyze it with a speed that just wasn't there.
A big secular thing going on is technology and deflation. This is where I think millennials are getting that it is an improvement in life, and they're taking advantage of it.
There is a lot of opportunity in all of this stuff [like healthcare business]. I don't know why everybody is focused on the negatives.
As a whole, [changing] is deflation force that is being underestimated. Whether each person thinks of it in the context of the word deflation ... what they think of it is, "Hard to hold my margin. I'm under margin pressure. I'm under sales pressure. I'm under cost pressure."
The ability of people to reach their own news sources now, and create different views, is really unbelievable, and [populism] may be part of this.
There is a desire for change. There is a millennial generation that doesn't like what they're seeing, but doesn't quite know what the solution is.
I do think [in USA] is a need for change. There is something wrong when you have $20 trillion of debt and crumbling infrastructure at the same time, and really fewer people employed than have been. Something is wrong.
I think [millenials] are taking advantage of deflationary forces to improve their life while not maybe having to chase the nominal money that was needed to buy a whole car, a whole house, a whole couch.
Income is there to create quality of life, but you can share your car and get where you want to go, and you can travel the world by couch surfing.
