John Kay

Plurality and diversity are generally sources of stability – in banking as in nature.

The British retailer John Lewis, owned by an employee trust and long a favourite of metropolitan women, has now become a favourite of their politician husbands.

The interim report of the Kay review into the effect of UK equity markets on the competitiveness of UK business, was released yesterday. It summarises public responses to the call for evidence, and draws out the issues that will be considered in the second phase of the review. Read it here.

In conditions of ignorance, people seize on any information available, even if their reason should tell them that it is irrelevant. Just watch the occupants of the airport lounge fiddling with their BlackBerrys.

John was interviewed recently by Global Brief, an international affairs magazine that covers politics, business and culture. They discussed competitive advantage, the wealth of firms and the future of global business. To read it, click here.

Is there such a thing as a business genius? It is a moot question this month, because in modern times Apple’s Steve Jobs, who died last week, was probably the individual with the strongest claim to that title.

If the winner of the competitive race is the company that is most innovative, not in productive efficiency or customer service, but in the ingenuity and opacity of its tariff structures, consumers will not be happy, or well served, in the long run.

I have always found it hard to interest people in measurement issues, but the way we record things in business and finance has a large effect on what people do.

Failure is intrinsic to the market economy: but the legitimacy of capitalism depends in part on how it deals with the consequences of such failure.

When corporations’ main assets are intangible, the location of their profit is still more difficult to pin down. A Swiss corporation discovers a drug at its research lab in England, manufactures it in Belgium and sells it in the US.