This is a year-end personal reflection piece. The following five takeaways of mine are inherently backward-looking, but hopefully by examining the past I become more informed going forward.

#1 Think Independently

We giggle when watching lemmings do all kinds of funny things in a group together. But we are not that different — we humans are just as social species as lemmings are. As a general observation, we like people who are like us — a tendency which builds an intellectual echo chamber that confines and reinforces our thinking, making it less independent.

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Thomas Friedman made an interesting argument in his book The World Is Flat: in a globalized world, historical and geographic divisions are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Through my experiences, however, I think the opposite is happening — in a globalized world where people from different cultures interact with each other, historical and geographic divisions are increasingly visible and relevant.  In order to make better decisions in a globalized world, local knowledge becomes more valuable than ever before!

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The other day, I was listening to the radio and the host mentioned a new phenomenon: smart speakers are challenging the position parents occupy in their children’s minds.  At the dinner table, kids prefer speaking to these boxes to learn things they do not understand — questions like, “Ok Google! How big is the moon?” — which basically downgrade their parents from “old and wise teachers” to “dinner guests.”

It struck a chord with me, because it reflects a broader social development, that is the foundation of the notion that “old is wise” is cracking.  I am convinced that investing in younger people and younger organizations will increasingly become the right choice for all investors.  This article offers my thoughts on why these changes have been happening, their implications for investors (investors in the broadest sense, not just financial: like parents invest in children, bosses invest in apprentices) and what the old generation should do going forward.  Please note that I am strongly in favor of “respecting your elders” but think we need to respect the younger people more than we do.

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I visited India last year. In ten days, I traveled in several cities – New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai. I was amazed by the country’s incredible culture: wherever I was, people are happy and welcoming. But I was troubled by the underdevelopment and I started to wonder: where is the “next global powerhouse” that we have been talking about? Especially in the U.S., people have been talking for 30 years about India as the “next global powerhouse.” But even in Mumbai, the nation’s wealthiest city, the deprived living standards were shocking.

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We live in a time when everything seems to be in English: web addresses, flight numbers and programming languages. It is tempting to not see that there are other languages being used in the world, let alone be motivated to learn a second language. It is no wonder that less than 1% of American adults have learned a non-English language and can speak that language “very well”. [1]

I am an English language enthusiast. When I first started to learn English, I considered it a school requirement. But now, I take true pleasure studying it. Behind this transition was my realization in the deeper purpose of learning a second language.

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Fall 2008 is when I first came to study in the United States. Joined with other college students at a small town in Indiana, together we witnessed the election of the first African American President. We believed the wheel of history, that of the United States and that of the world, had moved forward. Watching such a progressive social movement was a euphoric experience for many of us.

This year, it was different. After an unprecedented divisive campaign, 60 million American voters spent the night watching the election unfold in horror. Yet at the same time another 60 million voters were elated and thrilled. When I woke up the second day, I felt an unusual quietness in the classroom, disbelief in the air, as if students and professors were in mourning. What had just happened, in many people’s minds, was a move backward.

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