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This episode began with a curious email landing in my inbox. Not that the sender — my good friend Priscilla Hennekem — was mysterious, but rather the contents of her message were. It was brief and enclosed an attachment: a paper by Professor Gerald McDermott, titled “Public-Private Institutions as Catalysts for Upgrading in Emerging Market Societies.”

I scratched my head, opened the file, and started reading.

Now, Professor Gerald A. McDermott is the department chair and professor of international business at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Earlier in his career, he focused on how industrial networks shaped economic governance in post-communist countries. But what does any of that have to do with wine?

At first glance, nothing — until Gerald married a wonderful Argentine woman, which eventually led him to take a systems-deep dive into the Argentine wine industry. His paper charts how Argentina’s wine sector evolved from a state of chaos to one of cohesion and success. For Gerald, that success was no accident: it was a slow, transformation powered by the right systems and inputs. In other words, an industry thrives when it develops the right networks — diverse knowledge networks, diverse resource networks, and the right kinds of actions within those networks that encourage innovation and disruption when necessary. In Argentina, this emerged through effective public-private institutions.

I encourage you to read the paper yourself when you have time (seriously, make the time!). But for now, enjoy this fascinating two-part interview, which offers a completely fresh way to think about the health and development of an industry.

A huge thanks to Professor Gerald McDermott for joining me.

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