Forward Thinking

In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Janet Bush talks with Hayaatun Sillem. She is the chief executive officer of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the United Kingdom—the first woman to serve in that role—and of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. She also serves as chair of judges for The St Andrews Prize for the Environment.

Sillem discusses her transition from a career as a biochemist into the world of engineering, and the work she does to promote the industry to girls and women as well as individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds. On the latter, she collaborated with seven-time Formula One world champion Sir Lewis Hamilton on a landmark study on diversity in motor sport. She answers questions including the following:
— What excites you most in the world of science at the moment?
— How does engineering fit into a dematerialized world?
— How do we change the low share of girls and women who study engineering?
— Do you feel optimistic or pessimistic that we can solve the environmental challenges facing us?

This conversation was recorded in November 2021. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/Sillem

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In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, Michael Chui talks to Byron Auguste and Beth Cobert whose professional life is dedicated to fostering a more skills-based labor market. Their focus is on the United States, but their diagnostic can just as easily apply to other countries and regions. Both worked at McKinsey & Company for many years on labor-market issues before going on to work in the Obama administration. Today, Beth is the chief operating officer of the Markle Foundation and CEO of Skillful, a Markle Foundation initiative. Byron Auguste is the co-founder and CEO of Opportunity@Work. They answer questions including the following:
— Who is actually working in the US labor market?
— How does the language we use—“low skill”, “high skill”—cause problems?
— What could a potential future of more of a skills-based workforce look like?
— If employers and people want a skills-based workforce, why aren’t we there already?
— Do we all have to wait until there’s some global skills taxonomy we all use? How does this thing evolve so that it actually becomes practical?

This conversation was recorded in October 2021. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/BethCobertByronAuguste

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In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Janet Bush speaks with Guntram Wolff, the director of Bruegel, which is regularly ranked one of the top global think tanks. In early 2021, he was appointed to a new G-20 panel on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. Wolff discusses the challenge of being better prepared for future pandemics, climate risk in the run-up to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, and prospects for Europe’s economies as they begin to recover from the shock of the pandemic. He answers questions including the following:
— With your economist’s hat on, if you had to choose, what would be the one insight you would take away from the pandemic?
— What is the aim of the High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response?
— Is the balance of incentives tipping in the right direction for an effective response to climate change?
— Is Europe in good shape to recover from the pandemic?
— How could the tapering of pandemic-related economic support work with the very large economic imbalances between Northern and Southern Europe?

This conversation was recorded in September 2021. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/GuntramWolff

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In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Janet Bush speaks with distinguished economist Michael Spence. He is professor of economics and dean emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, senior professor at SDA Bocconi, and Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, 2001.

Spence reflects on some of the major shifts and challenges ahead, from rolling out vaccine programs in lower-income economies to tackling climate change. He answers questions like:
● Is the current fragility in supply chains a sign that something more fundamental is happening that could affect the course of globalization?
● Will new ways of working that emerged during the pandemic persist and, if so, what are the broader economic implications?
● Are you even more worried about rising inequality now than before the pandemic?
● Are you optimistic or pessimistic about COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference?
● Can you see a silver lining to this pandemic?

This conversation was recorded in September 2021. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/MichaelSpence

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In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Michael Chui speaks with Mary “Missy” Cummings, one of the first female fighter pilots in the US Navy and now a professor in the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, as well as the director of Duke’s Humans and Autonomy Laboratory. Cummings talks about her life as a fighter pilot and her journey into automation and robotics. She also answers questions like:
• What are your reflections on diversity across different fields?
• What are some interesting developments you’re seeing in the automation of vehicles?
• Are there things that car designers should be learning from the aerospace industry, or vice versa, as they’re starting to implement more levels of automated technology and driver assistance?
• What is the perfect use case for automation?
• What excites you most about advances in technology?

This conversation was recorded in August 2021. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/missycummings

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We’d like to share a special interview from our friends at McKinsey’s Inside the Strategy Room podcast. In this episode, you’ll hear Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, in discussion with McKinsey Global Institute co-chairman James Manikya. The theme of their conversation centered around how to build companies capable of thriving in the 21st century.

In particular, they address the major crisis AirBnB navigated in 2020 when the online marketplace went from having its long-term survival questioned to staging a successful IPO several months later.

They also discussed the sudden and dramatic plunge in AirBnB’s business, how Brian adapted their business model to those new realities, and how this challenge led to a reimagination of how the company defines its role in society and the economy.

And if you’d like to check out more conversations with business leaders like this, just search for “Inside the Strategy Room” on your preferred podcast app and subscribe.

This conversation was recorded at a recent online global CEO event focused on growing out of the crisis. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/brianchesky

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In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Anna Bernasek speaks with Jeffrey Seller, producer of Broadway hits Hamilton, In the Heights, Rent, and more about the tumultuous year-plus Broadway and live performances have endured. Ahead of Broadway reopening in September 2021 and live performances coming back across the United States and other countries, the man is non-stop. Jeffrey took us inside the room where it happened, sharing his experiences, including:
• Shutting down, pivoting, then staging a production in Australia during the pandemic
• How digital streaming services like Disney+ and Spotify affected demand for performance tickets
• Why he created an affordable ticket lottery to increase access to the magic of live, in-person performances
• Why he’s still an optimist, but one who’s focused on resilience

This conversation was recorded in May 2021. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/jeffreyseller

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In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, host Michael Chui speaks with Laura Tyson, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Tyson shares her journey in economics, from discovering Econ 1 in college to chairing the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. She also answers questions like:
• Are we in a “golden age” for women in economics?
• What impact has the pandemic had on gender equality?
• What can other countries learn from Germany’s apprenticeship and skills programs in preparing for the future of work?
• Why doesn’t she expect a slow recovery after the pandemic, as we experienced after the global financial crisis?
• Why aren’t predictions about the economy more accurate, like predicting the weather?

This conversation was recorded in June 2021. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/lauratyson

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In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, hosts Michael Chui and Anna Bernasek speak with Daron Acemoglu. Daron is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a coauthor (with James A. Robinson) of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, and the author of many influential academic papers. His research covers a range of topics, including political economy, economic development, economic growth, technological change, inequality, labor economics, and economics of networks.

The conversation focuses in on how we make growth happen in a world of technological change that is largely disrupting labor markets. As Daron puts it, “I believe that the political economy of growth ... and technology, automation, AI—those [things] are intimately connected.” The influential economist connects the dots between artificial intelligence, productivity, wages, and inequality, and how to counterbalance the impacts of automation.

This conversation was recorded in April 2021. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/daron

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In this episode of Forward Thinking, host Michael Chui speaks with Jeffrey Ding, researcher and founder of the ChinAI newsletter, about information asymmetry in artificial intelligence between China and the West. They cover why data may not be like oil, the Chinese industry adage on products, platforms, and standards, “unsexy AI” and more.

There’s a lot of talk right now about artificial intelligence, or AI, and what it means for global competition. Today’s conversation features somebody you probably don’t know yet but probably should. He’s famous in certain corners of the internet but his work, it turns out, is relevant everywhere. MGI research suggests that while there’s AI happening all around the world, there are two places where the most AI development is taking place, and it’s the US and China.

What’s interesting about that is that while a lot of the Chinese AI developers are reading and even coauthoring English-language papers, very few Western AI practitioners are able to keep up with the flow of information in the Chinese language, even when a lot of it is published openly. It’s almost like a one-way mirror—and this asymmetry might seem strange in a field where a lot of the work is openly available on the internet. But our guest, Jeffrey Ding, has been helping to make sure more AI information flows back from China to the West.

This episode’s guest, Jeffrey Ding, is a PhD Candidate in international relations at the University of Oxford and a pre-doctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, sponsored by Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. He is also a research affiliate with the Centre for the Governance of AI at the University of Oxford.

This conversation was recorded in March 2021. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/forwardthinking

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