Forbes Contributor Jon Springer has written a great summary of a recent TED Talk by Hans and Ola Rosling of Gapminder who discussed the global misconceptions people from developed countries have about the rest of the world and emerging markets in particular. They began their talk by asking a couple of questions from their survey which found that the overwhelming majority of people were wrong about the current state of social and economic progress (e.g. health care, women’s rights and education) in the world’s emerging and frontier markets.
Ola Rosling also offered the following four rules of thumb to fend off these misconceptions and to understand the world more properly:
- “Most things improve.”
- Assume that “the most people are in the middle” economically.
- Social developments – such as girls attending school for more years on average in a country, energy infrastructure development – often precede a country becoming wealthy.
- “Assume you’re going to exaggerate the problem.”
Hence, their entire 20 minute talk is well worth listening too by every emerging market investor.
To read the whole article, Misconceptions Of Emerging Markets, The Challenge And The Opportunities, go to the website of Forbes. In addition, the complete video and transcript of Hans and Ola Rosling’s Ted Talk entitled How Not To Be Ignorant About The World is available on the TED website.
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