World Perspectives

Route to Prosperity

Countries with lower GDP complained that wealth alone did not adequately measure a society’s relative success. Thus, was born the OECD’s Better Life Index, the World Happiness Report and many other indices. Other indices measure the societal components that lead to relative success, such as the Economic Freedom Index, the World Bank’s Doing Business report, and in today’s example, the Legatum Prosperity Index. The Doing Business report enables governments to focus on components in which they score low. In some respects, the Legatum index is similar but less specific.  Looking at the 47 countries that scored highest in Legatum’s 2020 assessment, the number one determinant of scoring higher, as usual, is th...

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From WPI Consulting

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.

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