OPINION
THE THREE OBSESSIONS OF THE SILICON
VALLEY ENTREPRENEURS:
THE FUTURE IS NOW
Pierre Haincourt MCICM looks back at significant advances in human
technology and ponders what’s next
L
AST year, invited by the French Credit
Managers Association to represent the
CICM and CICM Kent Branch, I went
to L’Association des Credit Managers
et Conseils (AFDCC) Credit Day which was
held on 18 November at the sumptuous and
prestigious Pavillon Dauphine in Paris for the
third consecutive year.
Just as the CSA featured Andrew Neil at
its 2016 conference, AFDCC secured Nicolas
Bouzou as its guest speaker. On his twitter
feed, Nicolas describes himself as a flying
economist, writer, avgeek, space geek…
his 10th book is called Innovation will save
the world. Along the lines of: ‘Should you
believe Schumpeter or Malthus?’ and ‘Would
you rather follow the Sparta or the Athens
model?’ Nicolas Bouzou presented his vision
of Evolution.
Starting from today’s tech revolution and
in the light of the key changes that have
taken place in the past centuries, here’s what
Nicolas’ flamboyant, futuristic and optimistic
presentation was about.
The greatest technological mutation ever
experienced by our world is underway. So,
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March 2017 www.cicm.c om
let’s try and understand what is going on using
our experience of previous economic and
industrial revolutions in our history. Such huge
changes are always ‘creative destructions’ as
Schumpeter liked to call them.
10,000 YEARS AGO
Antiquity: the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries
BC (the Age of Pericles) saw the move from
a neighbouring barter economy to a distant
and impersonal monetary economy. This
was the start of globalisation, banking, first
currency payments and maritime loans – the
ancestor of credit insurance. The ‘ancients’
(Spartans) and the ‘modernisers’ (Athenians)
had conflictual ideas about what constituted
progress. The Spartans were protectionists
and the Athenians, who invented democracy,
wanted to continue conquering the world. In
the end, they had a war, the Spartans won
it and imposed an authoritarian regime that
lasted for a very long time and diminished
Greece’s economic power.
The Renaissance: since the end of the
13th century, innovations such as the windmill
would stimulate everything that was going to
happen at the end of the 15th and early into
the 16th centuries. This is very similar to what
is happening today: many innovations and
many more to come. Florence was the richest
city at the end of the 15th century. At that time,
the great countries of Portugal and Italy had
protectionist policies in place. Why? Because
they were scared of change. This would mark
the start of their downfalls. At any time in
history, wherever you look, protectionism has
resulted in decline. The Renaissance started
in southern Europe and travelled to northern
Europe.
The 19th century brought the Industrial
Revolution. In fact, it started in 1770 with the
steam machines – trains, boats, electricity,
cars, aeronautics…economic growth seriously
took off all over the world. This time it started
in the north of Britain to gradually descend
towards France and southern Europe, the
reverse journey to that of the Renaissance.
FUTURE OF INNOVATION
Innovations are still coming in thick and
fast – robotics, genetics, 3D printing…these
innovations are happening around the
three key sectors of health, mobility and
sustainable development, exactly as during
The Renaissance and the 19th century. These
innovations are still disruptive, but for the first
time they get deployed over a short period of
time and everywhere on the planet at the same
time, sometimes with huge surprises; nobody
anticipated that Rwanda would be the largest
hub for technology and innovation in Africa!
The current issue: climate change. We
have never had so many resources in energy
as we do today. We have 80 years’ worth of
reserves in fossil energy. Our problem is global
warming, a real issue that can have drastic
consequences. Good news however: we’re
in our fifth consecutive year of reductions in
CO2 emissions on the planet, and for the first
time in 2016, China has contributed to that
reduction. Germany has increased its CO2
emissions. This illustrates that the price to pay
for the right to pollute is still too low.
The recognised standard
1. Increasing our life expectancy through
curing all diseases. Mark Zuckerberg
Foundation’s objective is to eradicate
all diseases by 2100 when our life
expectancy will reach 120 years, which
is apparently how we are genetically
programmed. After this, efforts will be
focused on slowing down ageing, the
second priority – so we’ll be younger for
longer but we still won’t live beyond 120
years old. Damn.
2. S
pace conquest, or rather controlling the
spatial ecosystem: colonising Mars (Elon
Musk’s project).
3. F
inding and developing new and less
polluting sources of energy.
All such innovations are killing the old
world order. The conflict between Uber
and the taxi companies is an illustration of
all the Schumpeterian conflicts (creative
destructions) that we will see in the next ten,
20, 30 years to come, and which will certainly
not be limited to the taxi example.
Many economists are currently Malthusians.
They are wrong. They want us to believe
that all these innovations are optical
distortions, that they do not contribute to
economic growth, and only carry negative
consequences. Worse, some digital business
owners say that their own tech companies
destroy jobs! Surprisingly the progress made
in healthcare is perceived by some as a worry
when it should be celebrated. They worry
about the necessary but complicated reforms
our healthcare systems need to undergo,
the ever-increasing price of medication, and
they ask: what are we going to do until 120 if
we have to live that long? In the end, there’s
always going to be a time gap between
innovations and the resulting growth. Artificial
intelligence will probably not take over all
of our jobs but it will surely trigger a deep
mutation in our work roles with a much
stronger polarisation.
Today, averagely skilled jobs disappear to
the profit of either unskilled or highly-skilled
jobs. So long as differences between man
and machine remain, both will continue to
be complementary and for as long as this
lasts, employment shortages will only be the
result of bad economic policies. What we
need is training and flexibility to anticipate the
inevitable changes that are currently taking
place. For example, in 15 to 20 years from
now there will no longer be ambulance, coach,
lorry, delivery or taxi drivers. Technology is
already here but only ‘we’ are slowing down
the driverless revolution thinking: ‘What are we
going to do with these millions of redundant
drivers?’ They need to be retrained for the
new jobs of the future.
What we should say and repeat: innovation
is always progress. The ‘it was better before’
The recognised standard
always gets proven wrong historically. As
Mermoz famously said: ‘There’s nothing worse
than dying in one’s bed.’ We need to embrace
innovation, talk about the future and explain
what it’s good for and how to get organised
around changes. We need to continue to think
big, be ambitious, invest, do better, do more
and keep progress going, and if we don’t
do this, there will be more negative political
nationalism and more extreme religious
fundamentalism. The current problem in
our society is that there is too much media
coverage of the radical speeches, when we
should get to hear more from the moderates
on how great the future looks and on how best
to prepare for it.
All in all, it was a great presentation by
Nicolas Bouzou and I was very sad to only
catch the last ten minutes. The unfortunate
thing about a day trip to Paris is that even
if you get on the first Eurostar you lose an
hour on the way out and you arrive late. I
would like to thank my friend and colleague
Christophe Nobillet, CEO of France Créances
and Committee Member of ANCR (the French
Association of Debt Collection Agencies)
whose passion in reiterating Nicolas’
speech during the coffee break and whose
comprehensive notes enabled me to write this
article.

Pierre Haincourt MCICM, Credit Limits
International.
Innovations are still coming in thick and fast –
robotics, genetics, 3D printing…these innovations
are happening around the three key sectors of health,
mobility and sustainable development, exactly as
during The Renaissance and the 19th century.
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