Last week, Paul Casady and I attended the Animal Health, Nutrition & Technology Innovation Europe conference held in London. We conducted two sold-out round table sessions on the topic, “From Startup to Grownup, Go To Market Strategies for Companies in the Animal Health Industry – and why It’s All About People”. The Kisaco Research team produced the well-attended event, showcased 19 startup companies, and brought in some energetic speakers.
One of those speakers was Sven Smit, Chair of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), and he made everyone listening start to think about what’s next for the global economy. He thinks the world is not just going through another business cycle, but is on the cusp of a new era, which is driven by the global pandemic, energy scarcity, rapid inflation and geopolitical tensions. The data presented was taken from a new paper from the MGI and he highlighted three past eras: the Postwar Boom (1944–71), the Era of Contention (1971–89), and the Era of Markets (1989–2019).
The most remarkable part of his presentation was on energy systems and how utterly unprepared we are as a global economy to achieve net-zero and how utterly dependent the global economy, including animal, feed and food production, is on fossil fuels. Mr. Smit wouldn’t speculate on a name for the new era and I won’t either, although if I did, it would have something to do with energy supply.
Bob Jones
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