An update to my post about Japan Needing More Babies . I read an article in the WSJ (a summary of an LA Times article) a few weeks back about the graying of China and the implications it will have on its economy in the coming decades. Here's an excerpt from the article: While China's population is relatively young, by the middle of the century it is set to become one of the world's grayest societies. Today, less than 8% of China's population is 65 or older. By 2050, that proportion will rise to 24%, compared with Europe's 28% and 21% in the U.S. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of elderly individuals will rise to less than 6% from 3% now. Moreover, at 1.3 billion, China's population is impressive now but will be less so in the future. According to U.N. projections, most of the world's total population increase from 6.5 billion today to 9.2 billion in 2050 will come from sub-Saharan Africa and the Muslim world. India's population is expected to ove...
I read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal a week ago titled "The Poor Get Richer" . It was basically about how the poorest part of our society has in the past 10 or 15 years increased their earnings more than any other segment of society. The findings are based on a study performed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO said that the main causes of the surge were a combination of welfare reform, expansion of the earned income tax credit (where people need to work to get the credit), and wage gains from a tight labor market. Cash welfare fell as a percentage of overall income while earnings from work rose after the welfare reforms put into place in 1996 under Clinton. Graduation rates have also been good for families with breadwinners, including those with women as the head of the household. There is still a real problem with chronically poor families though. But it's very encouraging to see that the welfare reforms are paying off.
I recently finished reading the book Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. I was interested in learning more about product marketing and this came up on a must-read list. After reading it I think it applies broadly across disciplines as product and company positioning aren't an after-thought but rather core to strategy. The book provides the clearest explanation of how to develop your positioning strategy I've seen. In my previous post on 7 Powers , you'll see that the first powers that all startups pursue are "counter-positioning" and/or having a "cornered resource". So positioning is essential to company strategy. 1. What is positioning? Positioning as Context You can think about positioning as context as it enables people to figure out what's important (and what's not). There are some common traps in setting the context for your product or company, including: Product changed: You're stuck on the idea of what you intended to build and ...
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