Power Sheet – June 24, 2016

Collectively they’re people who believe they got the bad end of the deal in the opening of the world to freer trade, migration, and acceptance of unfamiliar cultural values. The big news from Britain is that those people are a majority there, and now leaders around the world are wondering if they’re a majority in his or her country. If Hillary Clinton wins in November, she’ll face a similar issue: Trump and Sanders supporters, though opposed to one another, are united in their fury over how today’s economic and cultural order has treated them, and together they may constitute a majority of the electorate.

The Leavers in Britain have had the satisfaction of giving established authority a poke in the eye, but now they’ll have to face the consequences of doing what was worst for them. Britain and the Leavers will likely be less prosperous than they would have been in the EU. Despite the drama of the vote, very little has been resolved.

The No. 1 agenda item at the next G20 meeting, in September, seems clear.

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The scorching pace of change is such a common theme in business that as a concept it puts me to sleep. But an example can make it interesting, and a bit of news yesterday suggested a good one. BlackBerry reported earnings and said handset sales were down again; its global market share in smartphones is less than 1%. In this political season the news recalls memories of when Barack Obama became president in 2009 and demanded that federal techies figure out how to get him a secure BlackBerry phone, which he felt he couldn’t live without.

Think back a bit further. In the mid-1990s Motorola ruled the world of cellphones; now a Chinese company, Lenovo, owns the brand, and Lenovo and Motorola phones combined have about 6% of the market. After Motorola, Nokia was king; it has since left the business. Then BlackBerry phones became so addictive they were called Crackberry; now Wall Street analysts say they wouldn’t be surprised if the company shut down its phone business and focused on software. Today Samsung and Apple dominate the industry; analysts estimate that last year the two of them made 105% of total smartphone industry profits and that Apple alone made 91%.

That’s five leaders in this $400-billion industry in less than 20 years. We sometimes forget that Apple entered the business only nine years ago; next Wednesday is the anniversary. Business didn’t used to work like this. Everybody now repeats platitudes about the pace of change, but extremely few are able to internalize this reality and keep winning in the new environment.

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David Cameron to resign as Prime Minister
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Markets are in turmoil
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