World Perspectives

The Possible U.S. Year Ahead

Making prognostications about the year ahead has always been risky business, but predictions about the future have become a great deal more suspect following the failure of such guessing in 2016/17. The failures are particularly notable given that they occurred in this new idealized era of Big Data, algorithms and burgeoning artificial intelligence (AI). This prompts a fallback to a more intuitive approach to the dismal effort. Since most decisions are made first on an emotional basis with the facts then later found to support it, consider this a first phase based on observation and hope. Infrastructure: Following enactment of tax reform, the next big ticket item on the U.S. policy agenda should be an infrastructure investment package. The...

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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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