After the Bank of Japan moved from a zero percent interest rate, I spoke with Anil Kashyap, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. His sharp and skeptical comments about the Bank of Japan created a stir when Diamond published them.
In May 2006, I interviewed Mike Ryan, founder of the Creative and Innovative Economy Center. He argues that countries with developing economies should adopt strong intellectual property laws, or they’ll be left behind in the world economy. This didn’t run in Diamond Weekly until the fall.
Andrew Lo, an MIT economist, thinks that markets don’t behave efficiently, but rather adapt, meaning they should be viewed using a Darwinian model. I interviewed him for Diamond Weekly back in April 2006. A sample:
It may well be the case that natural selection will occur in the next 100 years not through biological means but through financial means. Just imagine it’s possible for us to create a cure for cancer and the cost of such as cure becomes prohibitive. It really will be literally survival of the richest.
In April 2006 I interviewed Clyde Prestowitz for Shukan Daiyamondo. The Japanese hold Prestowitz in high regard, though I’m not sure his ideas of integrating the Japanese and U.S. economies, right down to merging the currencies, are any more mainstream there than they are here. Certainly his gloomy outlook on our economy and our society don’t fit in with the mainstream.
Prestowitz Q&A
The evidence is that companies don’t rely on (patent laws) much. The basic underlying principle is that you shouldn’t be given a monopoly unless you get something for it, in other words if an innovator would innovate anyway, you shouldn’t give them a monopoly. In lots of areas basically 30 years of studies say they’ll innovate anyway.
So said Eric von Hippel, a prophet of user-driven innovation (what Wired cleverly called ‘Crowdsourcing’ in its June 2006 issue). I interviewed him in March 2006 for Diamond Weekly. The full interview as I submitted it is
Since February of 2006, I’ve contributed interviews for the World Voice column in Shukan Daiyamondo (Diamond Weekly), a large Japanese business magazine. Diamond’s Web site is both registration-only and in Japanese, a language I do not read. I’ve been reluctant to post on my site the files I send to my editor at Diamond, since they’ll inevitably be different from what I send. But on this journal I can be a little less formal, and in the interest of populating this site, I’m going to post one or two World Voice interviews a day until I catch up.
The first one I did was with education entrepreneur Chris Whittle, who runs Edison Schools, a for-profit manager of public schools. His book “Crash Course” was recently out. The document is here: whittle-qa.doc
A sample: If you study a chart of percentage of GDP allocated to different sectors, number one is healthcare and number two is education. So it’s a big world. And business is going to be in it in a very serious way.