In Chinese, the saying fifty steps laughs at one hundred steps is equivalent to the English version of the pot calling the kettle black. That should be the reaction to Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan’s comments at this week’s Bloomberg New Economy Forum. Wang said that, “Countries must rise above exclusive blocs and reject the zero-sum mentality.” This is right after China joined the exclusive trading block called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. He also pronounced that, “We should build an open world economy that works for all. We must firmly safeguard the multilateral trading system under the WTO and unequivocally reject unilateralism and protectionism.” Yet it is China that ranks 115...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.