Today: listening to “A Felicidade” at a Starbucks on Taipei‘s Minsheng East Rd (Taiwan’s Wall Street) after meeting local government institutions; on a Japanese wireless network.

Yesterday: meeting with the Chinese government in Beijing and afterwards looking for a quick bite before leaving for the airport in the diplomatic quarters of the city. Where do I end up? At a Bavarian Paulaner original with Muenchener Leberkaes at the Lufthansa Kempinski, watching my Chinese counterparts sipping Hefeweizen and eating Weisswurst; and being entertained by an Austrian host along with Chinese waitresses in Dirndls.

Last weekend: reading about the innovation drive coming from Emerging Markets (Replicators no more – how emerging markets are delivering innovation)) and then seeing the Chinese Patent office publish tremendous innovation goals on the patent front for 2015 (when innovation, too, is made in China).

Tomorrow: a quick lunch and ristretto at Isola in Hong Kong before flying to Australia to meet the execs of our new research company and to see the response to the flood in Brisbane.

In sum: the world is getting smaller, fast.

Wherever within an urban context you look, you see the same brands, aspirations and behavioral patterns, albeit with distinctly local overlays and undercurrents.

From a business perspective – judging from this week’s meetings with governments, institutional investors and financial intermediaries – this translates into:

Finding the right people to reframe fast-growing complexities into easy-to-understand simplicities.
Examples:

People (Industry Leaders) = Success (Mutual fund vehicle brand recognition)

People (Investment Leaders) = Success (Product brand recognition)

People (Sales Leaders) = Success (Client trust and confidence)

People (Product Leaders) / Success (Unique investment themes)

The right people = Hundreds of billions gained since the crisis (blockbusters)
The wrong people = Hundreds of billions lost since the crisis (blacklisted)

In other words, 21st century success hinges on: people and stories (P.S.)

Find them, wherever you can.

P.S. the biggest winners in 2010 were those firms that hired the people that their competitors fired in the first rounds of cost cutting during the 2008 crisis. Data on that can be found in the 2010 review/2011 outlook.