BREXIT: Exporters, Don’t Forecast Long-Term Decline

The Institute of Export has recently released the results of a survey of its members, post-Brexit referendum. There is one finding that has astounded me: 42% of respondents said that, in the event of removal from the Single Market, they expect their business to shrink in the long-term. I have one, provocative, question: what on Earth are these businesses doing between now (or, the recent past) and then?

Budgens, Beware the Middle or Trying to out-Waitrose Waitrose

Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy is somewhat of a Market Analyst’s Bible. Porter advanced the notion – among many others – that there are, broadly, three generic strategies:

• Differentiation, think Waitrose.
• Cost Leadership, think Aldi.
• Focus, think your local corner shop with its focused geographical market of a few hundred homes.

Michael Porter's Generic Strategies

Challengers Can Become 'Super-Forecasters' for Competitive Advantage

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Super-Forecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction’, by Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner

As a Market Analyst – having worked in a variety of environments from global businesses to academia, consultancy to the military – forecasting is a crucial skill; and, according to this book, "forecasting is a skill that can be cultivated." In one of those aforementioned, cliché-ridden, environments I have oft heard such statements as: “We’re here to forecast the weather, not read the news”; or, even more self-aggrandisingly amusing: “We are prophets, not historians.” Whatever; it remains the case that a central tenet of the role of an Intelligence Analyst is to make assessments about the future.

But, fascinatingly, the central premise of this superb book, ‘Super-Forecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction’, is that, actually, those who are often trumpeted as ‘experts’ at such things – from economists, to political journalists, to the CIA – are actually no better at it than laymen or, even, “a dart-throwing chimp.” OK, it’s a lot more nuanced than that, as the author Philip Tetlock – whose research coined the infamous anecdote about that talented chimp – would point out, but the point stands.