Versatile Amphibian

I’ve been thinking about the future of money, as you do. I’ve been doing this because I’ve been a bit disappointed by ‘challenger’ banks that have emerged in the UK recently. Why? Because they’re just banks… with a twist! Like they’re just a mobile app. Exciting stuff… but still a version of the storage and transfer of money machines that have existed for more or less two centuries. My thought experiment (ongoing) is about what we’d build if we didn’t have banks but did have our world of perfect information and connectivity. Here’s some semi-structured thoughts about it: Fundamentally (in any economy) I want to earn and use assets that enable me to reach my implicit and explicit life objectives.  Many of those objectives are about daily survival at a level of luxury to which I’m accustomed. Some are longer term and more complex. At the root are assets. Assets are a lot more liquid than they used to be because information about their value is more pervasive, as is infor...

One of the techniques we've been playing with this year is The Digital Nightmare Competitor, a framework for stretching the thinking of executives in a business by showing them how their industry could look strategically, operationally and economically in a digital world. I recently did such an exercise for a studio client and thought I'd share a nightmare I particularly like. Think of it as a Grinch-like Christmas present :)... November 5th  2026, London In late trading, shares in Wintermute , the apex media business of the 2020's hit a record high, valuing the business at more than $400Bn. This success marks a remarkable rise to prominence for an organisation barely a decade old. Classical disruption started with the customer From its launch in late 2016, Project Wintermute targeted people turned off by the complex media distribution and rights landscape of the mid-2010’s. By offering a single monthly subscription to unlimited premium digital conten...