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At Scale

I caught this episode of Finshots Daily on my walk last evening. I stumbled upon this podcast after a very unsatisfying experience of listening to idle prattle on design thinking with no outcomes on Think Fast Talk Smart. When I spend the end of my long work day listening to something, I want to learn something interesting so my mind travels in directions that the workday simply does not allow. The Stanford b-school production was a real disappointment but the folks over at Finshots made up for my loss. I learned a lot of new things - the episodes were truly bite-sized, did not seek to patronize or restate the supremely obvious like the other one. There was line there that gave me much to think about

 "A report by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released last week pegged that human smugglers make a staggering $10 billion a year. For context, that’s what Coca-Cola makes in a year by selling its fizzy drinks. It’s a lot of money!"

The presenter carried the comparison to its logical end by showing how the human smugglers as an enterprise make business decisions that would be considered sound if they were being made by Coke in the context of selling their fizzy drinks. There is a certain logic to that cannot be denied and it applies to everything in life that goes the commercial route, scales up and starts to drive an eco-system. When it gains a certain critical mass it becomes "too big to fail". It is why some countries including India cannot overcome the drag created by systemic corruption.

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