The Australian stock market has gone sub 4500 points on indices again. The innovation is awaiting a state change, as some sort of white knight. That horse and rider has not come yet. Instead investors may feel like it’s the shaded horseman of the apocalyptic kind. It’s overshooting on the down side. Here’s why there’s no joy for major index investors in shares – and that includes superannuation…

According to Companiesandmarkets.com, the 2008 value of the carbon market is USD $126 billion, an increase of over 1000% in 3 years. Whilst all estimates can be debated and there’s too many nuances for a pithy response, the bottom line is: there’s money in that carbon!

Are high house prices good or bad for innovation? It seems the RBA are saying house asset inflation is good for Australia, perhaps mainly based around housing stock shortages. Our Executive Director, Christopher Hire, takes a look at property prices impact on innovation, and how they may prevent tomorrow’s employers – today’s start-ups – emerging.

China and South America will be forming closer banking and trade ties, backing the importance of the South American region in innovation economics.

There may be some surprises in the Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), a measure of domestic, public sector corruption. Whilst war zones are among the worst, kick-backs, crony capitalism and nepotism means some Western countries fare less well than you might think. It seems institutions and process matter. Read more…

Start-up culture is vital, and this U.S. and European meeting of heavyweights, and upcoming entrepreneurs, will meet to discuss successful start-up sectors in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, from November 15-17 as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009.

Super-fast Internet is the new ‘Wealth of Nations’ – enabling innovation competitive advantage & improving destination desirability; failure is not an option.

Let’s not pretend the last 8 years were capitalism. Capitalism is pro-business, pro-middle class.

COMMENT, USA –Few people understand how the economic paradigm has shifted.
2thinknow do.
We predicted it would shift, and that their would be an economic crisis. Correctly. Back in October 2007, before others.
If you would like to see what it all means, including Obama’s election, see these slides on slideshare.
Opportunity for Local Innovation.
There are a lot of economic opportunities out there, but bright minds need opportunity.
Creativity needs its voice. Anyway, look at the slides.
I hope they help you in your quest to profit in the Bear Market.
Thanks to SlideShare for spreading this …

REVIEWS — SlideShare has created a contest on the Economic Crisis. Tell the crisis in 30 slides, it has over 200 entries. A few entries are good summaries from different views.
Of course 2thinknow entered, given the positive feedback we have been receiving on our  predictions of the crisis.
Today, our “Credit Crisis. The Short Explanation.” slides were spotlighted on the main page of the slideshare.net website.
Pretty nifty profile for a set of slides, we thought. Even better in PowerPoint with the animations. You can download them!
Another one I really liked was …

Please vote.
World’s Best Presentation ContestWorld’s Best Presentation ContestWe thought this was a pretty concise, accurate description of the economic crisis.
If you liked our work so far, in accurately predicting the crisis, please logon to Slideshare & vote for our entry. You only have until Monday!
And your vote helps quality rise-to-the-top. Not just those with voting-circles!
2thinknow correctly predicted the current market crisis in 2007. Using our propietary nascent trend analysis techniques, we were able to predict a September 2008 shock event (specifically) in October 2007.

ANALYSIS, USA — Wealthy white people with academic economic dogma are a plague on all our wallets, let alone houses.

The economics brains trust of our last 8 years or so of US (and British & Australian) economic policy have been a few rich white guys, right-wing academic economists from big universities like Harvard. These folks theories are to blame for severity of the coming US recession.
Why?
Most universities (like Harvard) have a fair mix of dissent; but the current US administration selected all economists (and think-tanks) with far-Right free market views.
Clinton, …

COMMENT, Global — Confused by Economics? A few politicians are too.
Economics is just theories. This is something not often enough remembered.
“(In the Great leap Forward) Mao launched a large number of large-scale but senseless projects, which achieved little, but took thousands of laborers away from the urgent task of growing food.
“At this time, the most popular economic theory, in both east and west, proposed that for a backward country to develop, it needed industry, and industry needed steel.”
– David Rooney: Guerrilla: Insurgents, patriots and terrorists from Sun Tzu to …

ANALYSIS, Global — A lot of people keep telling me they dislike religion because it leads to war.
There are a plethora of voices in the media crying for atheism in the Left, on the other hand the Right, have stated that anyone who doesn’t worship God in the prescribed manner is unpatriotic to their country.

The prosaic reality is that modern wars are about trade, power balances, resources like oil and water, or land for expanding populations.
Further, the reality is, in short, that imbalances create war. Imbalances in resources (and …

ANALYSIS, Global — As I write this US markets are in melt down, the UK is bleeding, and Australian markets have lost 24% of their value.
“Now like before, the financial deals are so complex no-one understands them”
That was me, part of a post predicting the current unraveling a month ago (27/12), I was making a comparison between 1920s and today. Mass Delusions, 2008 downturn

The events appear to be happening event faster than I believed. And now according to numerous reports, in many major markets the Bear is likely among us.
Here’s …

ANALYSIS, Global – Very few people actually understand capitalism, or economics. Even those charged with regulating economic free trade.
But most people understand sport, say European football (or soccer in other countries). And economics at a macro, international level is similar conceptually.
So here’s an easy explanation of the main argument between economics and ‘free trade’; and the practice of regulating markets.

You may think who is ‘right’ about economics and free markets is too complex to understand, but this analogy makes it straightforward.
I know a few politicians who could do …

First written in December 2007, the incredibly accurate predictions of the Global Financial Crisis by Christopher hire, Executive Director of 2thinknow. Perhaps the U.K. and U.S. are not out of those woods yet, although cleantech, greentech and renewables provide hope.

ANALYSIS, France and Global — There is a problem with prediction. Always has been.
(I am going to wade into the historical and allegorical, into 2 centuries past. By doing this, I hope to shed some light on some alternate views on prediction of change events, and the differences in viewpoint between myself and Nassim Taleb, and his book ‘Black Swans’ on predicting change and usefulness of prediction.)
There was a problem if you lived in France predicting the revolution of 1789. Some signs were there in hindsight. But the reality is …

COMMENT, Sydney and Global – Global is a word often thrown around like candy at Halloween.
Too often global operations have inbuilt assumptions that people are the same everywhere. We all do it.
The assumption of homogeneity effects Customers. Employees. Suppliers.
Assumptions of homogeneity are exacerbated when people speak the same language, often English.
These assumptions can cause big issues. Issues that surface when expanding into overseas markets or staffing a remote operation or even visiting foreign lands.
Why do we assume?
Too often we see similar western accoutrement’s like McDonalds, CDs, computers, internet, CNN, DVDs, …

ANALYSIS, Global — Our town, our world, is drowning under a flood of cheap sub-standard products. Products that we can and did once live without.
This is because our modernist global economic system in English-speaking countries largely runs on the manufacture and mass consumption of cheap low-priced goods made from oil-based plastics.
Think about that for a second. What really happens?
The following chain of events was loosely based on media reports of the China pet food story, Fisher Price scandal, and recent other events.
Here is one average scenario:
A company in your city …