Might not China win in both AI and renewables? The former with lower capex, making victory all the sweeter?

They went on forever and they, when I, we lived in Arizona And the skies always had little fluffy clouds...

I've worked in Laos quite a lot over the years and always thought that it was indeed an example of the battery of southeast Asia - in the sense of physical assault rather than energy storage.

7. This is something that could also be supported by international actors including donors, despite it often being easier to deal with favoured ministers or officials from a particular ministry.

6. Ministries should be combined and talent brought together to solve problems. Often a high degree of specialisation isn't required, and good people can address many different types of challenge or collaborate to develop policy. Collaboration should be materially incentivised.

6. I genuinely doubt whether the Westminster system suits most countries, which were often saddled with it after colonialism. Often the best people are sprinkled across government and don't have the chance to collaborate. Power systems have become entrenched.

5. Countries that successfully overcame this fragmentation often had strong leadership which deliberately broke down barriers or never allowed it in the first place. Singapore's Economic Development Board, for example, was a super-Ministry with authority over others. Its mandate was in its name.

4. Collaboration and coordination aren't necessarily in the interests of outside actors either, like donors, the domestic private sector or foreign companies.

3. In some cases (although fewer than many would imagine) it's because officials and/or politicians don't want transparency - for nefarious reasons. A related common complaint is 'lack of private sector consultation'. But you can bet that 'consultation' is going on behind closed doors.

2. Largely, it's on purpose; it's due to empire-building and the lack of incentives to share work or information. Each minister wants to create their own fiefdom with as much power as possible. Information is power, and sharing it dilutes their influence.

Then again lower-limb exoskeletons have been around since the 1960s and I doubt Nike will give them widespread social value, still less make them ubiquitous.

And... mind shoes?

For sure - interesting questions. Loads of stuff written about the relation between original research and market deployment. I'm no great fan of Joseph Schumpeter but his idea of invention -> innovation -> diffusion is useful.

It's the biggest goods sports company the world and it made $3.2bn in profits last year. It's hardly a mobility charity. This is marketing hype aimed at flogging more shoes; nothing to do with helping workers.

What a load of gimmickry. No-one needs any of that rubbish. I haven't bought anything from Nike since as a teenager in the 1980s I found out about its sweatshops. Nothing in this article persuades me that I should change my mind (yes, I know that all the sports companies used sweatshops).

2. A zombie stumbles on in the world regardless of its decrepitude, having infiltrated governments and transferred massive wealth to a super-rich and powerful class. We need to kill off the zombie for good. open.substack.com/pub/dangay/p...

And the idea that the genius of creativity can somehow be represented by a mathematical formula is ridiculous.