John Kay

The argument that we need the best and latest is powerful in political decision making, even among people who would never behave that way in their everyday lives.

As the financial sector has become global, deregulated and regulated over the last 30 years, transactions and trading have increasingly replaced trust relationships.

Since the ox was no longer being weighed, the key to success lay not in correctly assessing its weight, but rather in correctly assessing what other people would guess. Or what others would guess others would guess. And so on.

We are not interested in whether companies make good or bad cost-benefit calculations. We are interested in what these calculations tell us about their values.

If business is endlessly frustrating and politics endlessly rewarding, the career choice for able and enterprising people is obvious.

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.