Black swans

These are hard to predict, large impact events that are rare beyond the realms of normal expectation. Some people believe that all significant consequential events in history originated as Black Swans!

Who would have expected a series of what appeared to be unrelated events such as the Sub-Prime mortgage lending exposures, Northern Rock and concerns re long-term oil availability would give rise to such far reaching economic issues. It does remind us all that financial markets are based largely on a foundation of faith rather than something a bit more substantial.

Many businesses that built up on the back of a long bull market either came crashing down like Lehman's or had to do undergo some pretty radical surgery to stay in the marketplace. In some cases this involved focusing back into home markets and core strengths but the reality is that to do business going forward you have to accept that we now need to operate across a flat world!

The really great thing about the recession is that by driving businesses to cut expenses such as travel it has catalysed the emergence of a portfolio of solutions that help us to work far more collaboratively without having to leave the office. I remember early in my career with IBM having to go into a large video conferencing room for a global meeting. The camera was sound activated and slowly swung round on a turret when it detected a sound. The image quality was truly awful and out of sync. Aside from the huge amounts of fun to be had by the occasional clearing of ones throat it was a pretty useless communications tool.

The quality and ease of use of video solutions has been getting really good. It's never going to replace the benefits of a firm handshake or 1to1 lunch but it is pretty damn effective for most business meetings and significantly reduces operational costs. Many companies now have the networking infrastructure to support these technologies and willing to invest to reduce travel costs.

Perhaps the Black Swan has helped us all to now see a bit of sense here.....