Upcoming topics

1. The World Is Flat, best-seller by Thomas Friedman
   
   This 600-page book is possibly the most important book you will ever read about the future economy, yet most people, let alone parents, don't have time to read it. I will summarize it in one post for your convenience so you know how to prepare your kids for professional and commercial success in the new global economy.
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2. Knowledge management in the global economy
   
   I wrote a research paper titled "Intellectual Capital: The Wealth of Organizations" in 1998, as part of a requirement for my Managerial Economics course at McGill University. Today, 9 years later, I realize that most people are still unaware and frankly clueless about the issue of intellectual capital, although this is one concept that could help them achieve financial freedom.
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3. What's "new" in the New Economy?
   
   Rapid advanced in technology are part of this "new" economy, but there are more powerful forces that are far less visible, such as the sociological drive toward what I call "prosumics" (the economics of prosumer value production). Wikipedia, Youtube, etc. are examples of this new form of value creation, where the masses collaborate in quasi-real-time to create value and wealth. A second powerful force is the acceleration and development of new forms of knowledge (neo-epistemology) which rise above what we ordinarily call "knowledge" and which give tremendous power to cerebral professionals who have learned how to manipulate these new super-strategic symbols of their own creation or co-created with others.
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4. Should your kids learn about business?
   
   When your child reaches the age of 16 and needs to make money to buy stuff he/she wants, what will be his/her first economic reflex? To find a job or to find an employee?
   
   This will be a reflex largely determined by what you teach him/her. Whether your child decides to find "work" or a "worker" will be an excruciatingly important reflex that may make the difference between "working for someone else for the rest of his/her life" or "learning to achieve financial freedom in order to pursue his/her dream life."
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5. What is multimillionaire Robert Kiyosaki saying, and why you should care
   
   It's true that Kiyosaki doesn't go into the technical details of business startup creation, or business management. But that is not where his genius lies. He is brilliant because he created a simple framework so people can BEGIN to understand what the game of capitalism is all about. Without knowing about capitalism, a person will remain an "economic slave" till retirement age around 65.
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   Indeed, I predict that the Professional Age will give way to the Commercial Age, where a significant proportion of workers will own the means of production (informally or formally) and gain direct control of their economic activity (i.e. their career). In the Professional Age, baby boomers for instance advanced their economic interests by working for a company. In the Commercial Age, it will be in everyone's economic interest to have as many "bosses" as possible, on as many continents as possible.
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   The key is to realize that in the old economy, work = money. In the new economy, value = money. I would go further: digitized value = super money.
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6. What are the best books that parents should read to guide their kids
   
   Parents should not read nor be distracted by fiction books, for they offer no real knowledge to their kids. The powerful books to read are about economic liberation and empowerment, such as The New Financial Order, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (T. Harv Eker), Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats, etc. These are super-strategic books whose knowledge can guide a person throughout his/her whole life.
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7. How will careers be transformed in the new society and economy?
   
   Careers will rapidly become businesses. The key is to find a way to "clone" your boss so that you multiply your sources of revenues (while increasing your bargaining power vis-a-vis your boss). Linkedin offers a way to do this. In fact, there are many ways to multiply your revenue, however the main obstacle to doing this are psychological: people resist new notions and hang on to obsolete concepts like "having one boss."
   
   Careers in the new economy are also likely to be Web-based, and be deployed internationally via Internet technologies. That's because high-paying careers will be knowledge-based, and knowledge can be shaped into any format as well as translated into any language.
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8. What is a micro multinational company, and will your kid run one by age 25?
   
   Insurance is cheaper in Switzerland, programming is cheaper in India, manufacturing is cheaper in China, tax expenses are lower in Singapore, etc. A globally savvy young person can set up an instantly international company in a matter of days and leverage the advantages offered by each country in the world.
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9. How can young people use technologies, and not let technologies use them
   
   Technoleverage is a term I use to refer to the strategic usage of technology to help a person reach her goals. Yet, most technologies today -- from cell phones to personal digital assistants to laptop computers -- look and feel so sexy that there is the danger of being "seduced" by them although they do not concretely offer any strategic advantage.
   
   Technoleverage doctrine starts with one's goal first, and organizes all technologies AROUND this goal. It warns of the severe danger that Einstein talked about, when he spoke of our age as being one characterized by "profusion of means and confusion of ends."
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10. What are the opportunities unleashed by the Internet, and what are the threats?
    
    Basically, you can use the Internet to influence a lot of people, or be influenced by a lot of people. The key for a young person is to connect to as many smart and high-integrity people as possible so they can be guided in life. Next, a young person should learn to use the Internet as an empowering tool to fill one's mind with powerful information and knowledge. This is difficult because there are so many distractions on the Web. But it is not impossible. Preemptive cyber-cognitive programming is one technique I recommend, for programming in advance what one should pay attention to in order to build one's knowledge base and allow it to grow in a compounding fashion.
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11. What is cyber-wealth and how can you build such wealth for your children

The above are some of the topics I will write about, so please feel free to email me those that you are most interested in and I will write on those topics first.