Trillion Dollar Growth Trends to 2020 – Bain & Co

The world economy, according to Bain & Co., will be growing at abour 3.6 % next 10 years to reach about $90 trillion by 2020 – a 40% increase from now.

The following 8 are the trends that will propel this growth

1. Next billion consumers – emerging economies will contribute $10 trillion to global GDP and will add millions of middle class consumers with lots more interesting business opportunities

2. Old infrastructure,, new investments – estimated contribution to global GDP by 2020 – $1 trillion

3. Growing output of primary inputs- investments in conservation measures, alternative resources and technologies will increase; new fossil fuel sources will decrease economic incentives to invest in renewable energy. Total contribution to GDP – $3 trillion

4. Keeeping the wealthy healthy – ageing populations in wealthy economies will need better treatments, contribution – $4 trillion

5. Everything the same but nicer – soft innovations will give consumers niche and premium products. Contribution? – $ 5 trillion

6. Developing human capital – better social infrastructures, especially for education to prepare the masses for the new world – $2 trillion

7. Prepping for the next big thing – five potential platforms – nanotech, genomics, artificial intelligence, ubiquitous connectivity and robotics show significant promise for growth – $ 1 trillion contribution

8. Militarisation following industrialisation – more investments in military/defense to counter insurgency, terrorism and cyber warfare. $ 1 trillion contribution

Interesting…surprised to see that they are predicting decreased investments in green and renewable, outside of it, not surprised about the rest. Excellent and thought provoking list

Source: Bain & Co

Investing Gurus Bullish on Natural Resource Stocks

With the world population continuing to rise, global economies running for the most part on non-renewable resources, and central banks injecting huge sums of money into the financial system in recent years, some of the world’s most successful investors have been bullish on natural resource-related stocks recently.

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Alex Denner, earlier with Icahn, $2 Billion Man Starts Biotech Hedge Fund

Alex Denner knows how to spot biotechnology companies with promising drugs and make sure investments pay off.

Working as Carl Icahn’s top health-care investing executive for the past five years, Denner has targeted at least six drugmakers from ImClone Systems Inc. to Biogen Idec Inc. (BIIB), prompting sales of three. He’s generated about $2 billion in profit for Icahn, said a person familiar with his record who declined to be identified because the matter is private.

Now the 42-year-old Denner, who has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, is splitting with Icahn to start his own hedge fund. As some investors avoid health care, partly because of regulatory hurdles, Denner’s knowledge of science and business gives him an advantage as one of the industry’s few activists

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$300 Trillion for Solar To Supply All World’s Electricity?

Among all the noise and sound about solar comes an interesting analysis.

To a question on how much land area would be required for solar to supply the total world’s electricity, the answer is provided as approximately 500,000 sq km. And the cost for this? About $300 trillion!

I am not sure how reliable their calculations are, but if these numbers are correct, it is a mind boggling amount to invest to have solar as a sole source of power. Given that solar PV systems have a lifetime of about 25 years, every 25 years this amount needs to be reinvested (OK, not so much, perhaps much less than half given that solar panel prices are falling dramatically, but even that will be a lot of money).

So, that would be $300 trillion for 25 years or about $12 trillion per year.

Whew!

Bill Gates Changing the World Again, One Vaccine Drop at a Time

How to make GlaxoSmithKline and other pharma giants to produce enough expensive vaccines for children who need them most but can afford them least? The answer, Gates increasingly believed, lay in making Adam Smith’s invisible hand more visible, giving the newly formed market a benevolent shove in the direction of free enterprise.

Thus, in his new avatar (oh well, there are some who say he could make a return to run Microsoft, but that I’m sure, are just rumours), Gates will be changing the world, not one PC at a time, but one vaccine drop at a time.

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Karl-Johan Persson – Hennes & Mauritz has mindset of small company

Hennes & Mauritz is still run like a small family business, focusing on long-term results and maintaining the founder’s informal management style, despite being one of the biggest clothing retailers in the world, according to the Swedish group’s chief executive.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, family member Karl-Johan Persson said H&M tends not to react as strongly to short-term market pressures as other publicly quoted companies.

“If you are a public company it’s very tempting to do what’s best in the short term. It’s not a problem to pump up profits — we could easily do that — but we have to balance the short term and the long term,” he said.

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Are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page Overrated?

Microsoft’s, Google’s, and Apple’s products were develop and marketed by hundreds of engineers and marketers both inside and outside their corporate boundaries paid on the basis of performance, mostly in stock options, rather than on a flat wage basis.

In this sense, each and every member of these corporations and their partners and alliances is part of a collective entrepreneurship rather than part of a hierarchical organization that divides its members into stockholders, managers, and workers, into insiders and outsiders. Each member plays a role in the activities of these entrepreneurial networks and shares the risks and the rewards from the discovery and exploitation of new products.

Thus, says this article, we are overrating individuals for what is essentially a team’s achievement. Do you agree?

LED Lighting to Capture 52% of the Commercial Building Market by 2021, According to Pike Research

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are gaining significant momentum as an alternative to incandescent and fluorescent lighting in commercial buildings, particularly as the cost of LED lighting technology continues its rapid decline. While the market share of LED solid-state lighting (SSL) is currently quite low, a new report from Pike Research forecasts that LED share will reach 52% of the commercial lighting market by 2021. The cleantech market intelligence firm anticipates that LED lighting costs for various SSL products will be reduced by 80% to 90% in many cases during the next decade.

The report adds that incandescent and less efficient T12 and T8 fluorescent lamps will be almost completely eliminated over the next 10 years. To take more than 50% of the market, LEDs will take share from compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting, and general linear fluorescents.

Pike Research forecasts that the global market for commercial lighting will reach $42 billion in 2011 and see a peak of nearly $54 billion in 2012 before gradually declining to about $30 billion by 2021. The decline will be due to the extended lamp life of both fluorescents and LEDs as they become the primary lamp types, increasingly displacing demand for replacements for less efficient and shorter-lived incandescent lamps.

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Thorium: World’s greatest nuclear energy breakthrough?

If you are eager for a dependable and cheap energy source that doesn’t spew toxins and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere — and that doesn’t result in terrible, billion dollar accidents — there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. It could be from a common but relatively unknown metal called thorium.

In the right kind of nuclear reactor, they say, thorium could power the world forever — and without the problems that come with the nuclear energy we use today, from Fukushima-like meltdowns to the difficult by-products of plutonium that leave behind radioactive waste and weapons material.

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Latisse: The accidental Beauty Breakthrough?

Like so many great inventions, Latisse came to be by accident. An unexpected, welcome side-effect experienced by patients using the glaucoma eye drops Lumigan.

Patients who were just trying to get some relief from this painful eye condition, were finding that their eyelashes were growing longer, thicker, and darker.  Not bad when it comes to side effects!

Allergan, the massive billion dollar beauty empire that makes both products, obviously jumped on this discovery, and took it to the FDA for approval as a cosmetic, now called Latisse.

Source: BayouBuzz