World Perspectives

Sovereignty’s Trap; Sustainability’s Trap; Job Requirement

Sovereignty’s Trap Beijing, Brussels, Washington, and other capitals are using the pandemic to rationalize a rush toward national self-sufficiency, but it will not be without a price. The ultimate poster child for having very short supply chains is Argentina. Peronists have spent decades perfecting import substitution schemes with the result being very little external competition, and thus relatively unsophisticated manufacturing. Argentina is now uncompetitive in about everything except agriculture, and now this main source of foreign exchange is threatened this year by drought. The rush to reshoring could slow global productivity gains and thus real economic growth for years to come.  Sustainability’s Trap U.S. Represe...

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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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