Author: Michele Wucker

When people ask me about the definition of a gray rhino, I often point to the top right-hand quadrant of the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report, which highlights risks that global survey respondents deem to be both highly likely and high impact. Because I think so highly of the report’s important role in drawing attention to obvious and likely risks that we should not ignore, I was honored to participate in the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2018 with an article on the relationship between cognitive biases and risk management. Here it is: Cognitive bias and risk…

Michele Wucker spoke via live video feed at the Netease annual economists conference in Beijing on December 18, 2017. Watch via THIS LINK Her comments follow: “When you look at a gray rhino from different angles, you get different pictures: tactical versus strategic questions, immediate versus big picture, short term versus long term. An economist sees a gray rhino very differently from a sociologist from a political scientist, even though they are all looking at the same creature. Looking in up close, we see the financial imbalances and risks to which the economic community in China has been devoting a…

After Chinese President Xi Jinping’s annual New Year’s address, it has become an annual tradition for Chinese media to scour his bookshelf for new titles. In 2018, the new books include The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore, which was released in China in February 2017. Other new economics books include textbooks on ecological economics, W.W. Rostow’s 1960 classic The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, and Money Changes Everything by William N Goetzmann. The bookshelf also included texts on understanding artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and machine learning, including The Master Algorithm by…

As 2018 top risks forecasts roll in, it’s worth a quick look back at the top gray rhinos of 2017 –the most worrisome obvious challenges to the world- and the progress that has been made, or not, in dealing with them. Here’s a rundown of how the 2017 top gray rhino risks have played out. 1) The US Political Environment. Risks have increased over the year as any hopes were quickly dashed that Donald Trump would govern more moderately than he had campaigned. His erratic and bellicose behavior, against the backdrop of an investigation into his campaign’s collusion with Russia…

“Are you surprised by how calm people are about the situation with North Korea?” a new Korean friend asked me during my recent visit to Seoul. I was there to speak about the future of jobs amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution to an audience at the World Knowledge Forum in October, but spent some extra time after the event to get to know the city and the issues facing the Korean Peninsula. The appearance of relative calm was indeed uncanny. In the wake of a September 3 nuclear test, as Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un continued to sling insults…

When I compiled the Top Gray Rhinos of 2017 list early this year, I noted that concerns about financial market shocks had fallen to fifth among the things keeping risk analysts up at night. I speculated that perhaps market worries simply were wrapped in among pressing concerns about the United States, Europe, and China’s politics and economies, the top three worries on the list. Revisiting those risks as the third quarter draws to an end, I’d say market worries have catapulted to the top, though you would be hard pressed to see it in the behavior of financial exchanges. The…

Michele Wucker joined CGTN’s Rachelle Akuffo August 14, 2017, to talk about gray rhino risks in China’s economy.

How intrigued I was recently when I found that I would be speaking in Shanghai to an audience with an artificial intelligence translator.[bctt tweet=”I was intrigued to speak in Shanghai to an audience with an artificial intelligence translator. ” username=”@wucker”] The team fed a draft of my remarks to it ahead of time to “train” it. As I spoke, it interpreted my remarks and posted them on large screens behind me. Like many new forms of AI, there’s still human involvement: a real person supervised the translation program. That may have been why there was a long delay. A really,…

Gray Rhino & Company CEO Michele Wucker spoke at the 70th CFA Institute Annual Conference in Philadelphia May 21, 2017, applying the gray rhino framework to challenges facing the financial management industry. Peter M.J. Gross summarized the talk: “Is Your Gray Rhino Plan in Place?” View the Virtual Link interview (scroll to 0:51) [View the story “The Gray Rhino at #CFAEdge” on Storify] Storify by Michele Wucker Mon, Jun 05 2017 15:46:59 The Gray Rhino at #CFAEdge 70th CFA Institute Annual Conference -Sharpen Your Investment Edge CFA Challenge@ResearChallenge Do you have a plan for dealing with…

My Facebook and Twitter feeds were chock full of “Vive la France!” posts Sunday as the word circulated of centrist Emmanuel Macron’s election as the next president of France. Macron roundly defeated Marine Le Pen. Fractures within the European Union ranked as the third most important obvious but unresolved “gray rhino” threat of 2017, in my annual review of major top risks lists compiled by risk and investment experts at the beginning of the year. France’s election marks a major inflection point in the unfolding of European political -and thus economic- risk. While polls had showed Macron with a wide lead,…