Building a World of Plenty: A Bold Vision for Global Prosperity by 2100

I wondered, Marie, if our listeners had voted with their feet and said, "Here's the feedback. No more music. No more dancing. " — That's the feedback I get from my children. — That's right. Welcome. We'll give it a second. The emojis flying again. — The emojis flying. Maybe that means dance. — Oh, you look at you, Blair. — Yeah. Well, you know, great. Not my first not my first unpacked. — Welcome, welcome, welcome to our February session of Mckenzie Unpacked. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Marie — and I am Blair and we are super excited to have you for our what is this? Marie 17th session. — I don't know. Stop counting. It's so much fun. — Yeah. Exactly. It has been so much fun. I do feel many of us feel it's the 38th month of 2026 already. I feel that way a bit. Um but we are thrilled. We have a fabulous topic today. So we're so excited to welcome all of you to our unpacked uh series. If you have not joined us before, this is something that Marie and I uh it was a bit of a brainchild a year and a half ago after, you know, we spent time talking to thousands and thousands of candidates and one of our biggest challenges is how do we actually bring Mckenzie to life? The McKenzie we know, we've each been here for over 20 years and it feels like there's such a misperception in the market many times about who we really are, what our culture is, what it's like to work and thrive here. So, we started this episode on a monthly basis to pass to bring you in the fold uh and we invite friends of ours around the firm to join us on various topics. We're really excited. We have some McKenzie celebrities today, which I'm pretty excited about. Uh but we're that you're here maybe. Yes. And I don't know if it's my internet acting up or not, but uh am I okay? Am I breaking up a bit or I'm fine? — You're okay. — Okay. Because you are breaking a bit for me. I'm at the Mckenzie office. We have fantastic internet. — So for those of you who join for the first time or for those who have been here before, our unpacked episode always has three parts. Uh we always start a bit with what's on our mind to anchor what is going on in the world today. And then we have the um deep dive which is unpacking the suitcase. Um so the topic that we want to dig into more and we have uh something super exciting today as Blair said McKenzie celebrity who is also based here in Amsterdam. More in a second. And then we both are moms of kids and we would never go on a trip without snacks. So we always finish with a little bit of advice. Snack uh snack for the road. So you can hopefully take away something very practical from the session. But um before we go to our deep dive, Blair, what's on your mind today? — Well, I suspect it's on many of our minds. It's the Olympics. I love this time of year. Our family is glued to the TV watching, you know, it's so humbling and amazing to see people at the top of their sport competing and showcasing their gifts, which is amazing. Um it's particularly humbling because Marie and I actually hire several people every year who are either Olympians or parolympians. So, there's a bit of that uh imposttor syndrome that you think, yikes, we've got people who are absolutely at the top of their game athletically, but then they're also amazing client counselors and problem solvers. Um, we actually, it's interesting whether you're a pro athlete or an amateur athlete, it is a quality that we really value and recognize in terms of capabilities that we think help you thrive at McKenzie. grit, resilience, self-discipline, selflessness, pursuit of excellence. Those are all things that athletes uh really exhibit. So, it's been a lot for us to get to know athletes throughout our recruitment process. How about you? — Same. Yeah. Same here. Um our favorite despair figure skating where you also have the collaboration and the coordination of, you know, bringing together a uh a fantastic athletic performance. my children because this year right is in Italy so not too far away from the Netherlands. My children really wanted to go but it's uh not so easy to get tickets. So that's why we also just watching it on TV a lot every day. But what I also always love about the Olympics is just the positivity and the enthusiasm and also the amazing stories of dreaming big and setting aspirations. I mean you talked a lot about the skills um athletes bring that we're very excited about. I would add to that one this whole idea about dreaming big, not giving up and setting really

high goals and aspirations. And it's such a happy event bringing together the whole world on a topic with so much positivity and optimism and enthusiasm which fits actually quite nicely also with our topic today. So Blair, what uh should we dive into our guests? — Let's do it. So, we are really excited today uh as we mentioned to bring two of the authors of a new book which I have sitting right here. I think Marie does as well. — It's on all of our desks right now uh across McKenzie. Um it's called A Century of Plenty. It's really a groundbreaking book. We were talking earlier. It's sort of the cool mix of optimism and realism that I think is a hallmark for how our firm likes to think about the world. So, we're really lucky to have uh one of the lead authors and contributors here today. Um the book was written by our McKenzie Global Institute. So, we'll spend a bit telling you for those that aren't familiar with MGI and the concept. We will explain what that is, but the book is really about uh sort of the unprecedented advances of the modern age of the past century uh and really goes deep into the progress machine that has driven these advancement. But the coolest part is the vision it paints for the future where you know the author sort of asked the question is it possible if every country around the world everyone's the highest performers to the lowest performers could all achieve the prosperity of a Switzerland by the year 2100. Uh and it would require some big leaps like 8. 5x growth in terms of our global economy. So you think, well that's impossible. But our authors have run the numbers and it's both possible and in their mind what we should collectively aim for. So without further ado, we would love to welcome Sven Smith and Cherylyn Chen. Uh congratulations to both of you on launching this fascinating, optimistic, aspirational uh look at our world. And uh we're just so excited that you're both joining us today. So welcome. — Thank you Blair and Marie. Yeah, thank you so much for having us. — So great to have you. Let's start a bit with a round of introduction. Actually, Sven, I I've met you for the first time 23 years ago. I'm not sure if you remember. I certainly still remember. I was a business analyst in Germany working on a project and you were the Dutch uh senior person who came uh to us in Germany, you know, every week or every second week. And already then I was super impressed by the amount of reading you were doing and the fantastic insights that you were always bringing to our team room. But uh well SW as I mentioned you're based in Amsterdam so just a few um rooms away from me right now. You are a former senior partner with the firm and the former chair of the Mckenzie Global Institute which is really um one of our big global think tanks that we would love to learn a bit more about it. You've been with McKenzie for 35 years, which is really truly incredible, and have had many roles at the firm, among which also leading the European region and the strategy and corporate finance practice. — I think Marie might be calling you old Sven. I don't know. I just I you know — I don't know if you still remember Swen going back to your very beginnings what did initially drew you to the firm and why did you stay so many years — so when I started of course life was a little different in Europe in particular you know uh we hired three people in the Netherlands uh that's a very different number that Marie can say how much that is — and it was a little unknown what this thing called McKenzie was because we were just coming onshore roughly from the United States when I joined. Uh and uh so I think it was a bit of a mystique uh thing uh that got me to talk about uh whether I should join. A friend of mine who joined had suggested that I should talk while I was just doing normal stuff as a mechanical engineer going to companies that maybe needed an mechanical engineer and then I got the invite to come to McKenzie which I found a very strange place uh in many ways because first of all you couldn't find anything that it does nobody knew what it was so it's very different than now of course you all in the who are listening to us know what McKenzie is I presume uh but you know uh there were some strange things going on because the questions that I got asked were completely abnormal to what I thought a recruiting interview was. You are now off sure rehearsing all kinds of cases. I didn't even know what a case was. But one thing I remember is I walked into the elevator came out and there was this big Leon Levinci poster with the uh I think it's Jesus hanging on the cross type thing with the circles around it — and it said we hire and I sorry at that time it was we hire Renaissance men. I don't think that was the meaning of course should be Renaissance people and the Renaissance thing I kind of liked

and I said wait a minute that's a strange way to hire people and uh but then you know I actually felt Renaissance in there and I also thought that with what I like to do is help shape the future which our book is also about uh this might be a place that actually does that and my 35 years and that's why I stayed have confirmed that I'm working on the future not in the past and I'm working and help to shape the future But there's a very other thing and you know Marie you might not know this in Blair and Sharon also but when I was young I was pretty much a uh anarchist. So when my dad would come and fall asleep and he had a tie on I thought a tie was sort of a signal of you know oppression and uh and not very free. So I cut them off. I probably cut 10 ties off my dad's chest — while he was falling asleep. My mother kind of liked it because he woke up afterwards. Uh but the reality is um that's how I was and then this thing said it's a partnership — which is as close as a democracy can get in a firm. Uh this is not a place I've been here for 35 years. I've never had a boss and when people ask what did you do when you had a big role? I said you know I served the partnership with the partnership for the partnership to make it better. And in my time, the partnership has gone from a few hundred people to a few thousand people. And it still works. I still feel that a person that I don't know in San Francisco is part of our culture, part of our system. And when I meet them again, I can expect from that person the same reciprocal partnership as I will give to all partners. And that model is in my view just superior to any organizational model. I know lots of companies out there are not like that. if I had to sneak out, which I'm not, and would become CEO or try to build companies that are partnerships, too. — I love that, Sven. That's an incredible description. We often spend time trying to uh explain to candidates and bring to life sort of the beautiful messiness of the democracy of a partnership. I think you characterize that perfectly. Uh which is an experiment that we are now entering our hundth year. We turn a hundred this year. So I think again very akin to the book to think about what are the things that have gotten here today and what's going to be what are going to be the pillars of our future going forward. Sherin I excuse me I'd love to ask you the same question. Uh Sherin is an engagement manager so a team leader who manages our client service teams based in London though I believe started your career in our Singapore office which again is quite common. Many of us uh spend time working our way across various regions in McKenzie. Uh Cherylyn has mostly done her client work around digital transformations across a range of sectors but is currently working with Sven and the Mckenzie Global Institute. So Cherylyn, tell us uh what's your Mackenzie origin story? Did you also feel like being a Renaissance woman called to you or what was it that brought to Mackenzie in the first place? — I'm not sure if I would dare to claim the term Renaissance woman, but you know, I did double a double degree in business and linguistics, so clearly I didn't really know what I wanted to. — Very interesting. Very leftrain, right brain. I love it. — Yeah. So, for me, I think, you know, if I think about why I joined Mckenzie, I put it down to three things, right? I I've always been quite analytical and so I really wanted to um get into this rigorous data analytics, fact-based approach to solving some of the world's toughest problems and as I said, didn't know which industry I wanted to specialize in. So, you know, I thought McKenzie would let me kind of work across industries and indeed I've had that chance over my time at McKenzie. — Um and the second thing was obviously I'd heard what a great place it was to work with some of the best and brightest people on really, really cool problems. You know, it's a place that constantly challenges you to learn more, to be better. Um, and to Sven's point of the partnership, you know, I found in my years at Mackenzie, the spirit of collaboration is really so great. Even working on this book, we reached out to colleagues from all over the world, experts in their fields to kind of bring the best of the firm's insights uh to this book. And then the third point you kind of mentioned with my um journey was the global footprint that really appealed to me because I did my undergrad in the US and I knew that I wanted to kind of uh experience working around the world. So, I went back home to Singapore first for a couple of years. Um, and then I did a transfer to London and that's where I've been based since. — I love it. — And wherever she was hiding, I worked with her. — You managed to find her. Uh, oh, that's either wonderful or creepy, Sven. I'm not sure. — Well, that was wonderful. Of course. — Okay. That makes sense. — We talked already a little bit about the Mckenzie Global Institute, but some people might know it, but a lot of people might not have come across it. And it's quite special in terms of the types of research uh we do and how that then influences also you know the opinion and the aspirations of our clients. Schwven can you share us a bit more about what the global Mckenzie global institute is? How is it decided what type of research we do there and how is that research being used? — Yeah the Mackenzie Global Institute has been roughly around as long as I've been around in the firm. So it's also quite uh established institute. It

was a donation of the partnership and still is um to fund economics research in a slightly different way. Uh it's independent. So we sometimes analyze stuff that the rest of the firm says really you want to go there and we sometimes come up with answers where the rest of the firm says really you want to go there. Mhm. — But mostly what we try to do is rather than to do top- down macro analysis because we have a lot of people deep in energy or in materials or in banking or in industrial businesses or in consumer businesses. We have microto macro insight. So while the institute is large with 100 people full-time in different ways at any given time, it's not the largest think tank that you can find out there. the larger ones that are policy institutes even some of the research side this think tank has the unique leverage that if we want to spend time on energy maybe with five 10 people in MGI we can leverage 3,000 people — that spent their life in energy and we can build up an insight from the individual power plants of all power plants in the world to what is then the macro insight and as a result we discover things differently than the typical macro profession — and we don't do policy advice because we believe you know splitting hairs between who gets which money and not is actually part of the very difficult task of politicians. That's not our task. But we do provide baseline knowledge. If you take our research over the last seven years on climate whether that's on the risk of climate or it's on the cost of climate or on how you can make it more efficient or the latest one on adaptation. The numbers that we come out with and the thoughts are actually baseline to all discussions. The 9. 3 trillion cost per year that we published six years ago is the number that gets quoted. By the way, I found it funny that if you actually ask could we have an abundant future — to most of the LLMs, it will actually come out the Mckenzie century of plenty and basically say the baseline structure for that is what these guys came up with. Now I'm not saying that to brag but I think it's it's the uniqueness is the micro to macro that leverage the scale of Mckenzie and all its knowledge and its independence. We don't research all topics but we do technology demographics the future of work including AI of course we do productivity a lot we do balance sheets and so on and with that we establish insights that should be a foundation to help the world progress. — Thank you. That's I think really helpful and it's interesting there's an analogy in that again we spend so much of our time speaking with candidates many of the people who are interested in McKenzie are interested in doing exactly that Sven taking their micro capabilities and their micro uh areas of expertise and having macro impact which I do think is one of the wonderful opportunities at McKenzie that you get — so on that one Blair just be clear that we do in MGI but of course all our work does that too. Yeah, exactly. — Because when we work with a company and that company gets better, it adds productivity to society which adds prosperity to society. When we work with a governmental institution to make what they do better, the same thing happens. — And so that interest, I think, is represented in our work, not just at MGI. Uh unfortunately, we can't have all the recruits thinking about I'm going to join MGI. It is 100 people, and I don't think it will be more than that very soon. — Yeah. Well, it's a good segue, Cherylyn. I'm curious. How did you as an engagement manager serving clients, how did you get involved in MGI? Because you're right, that's not said we don't hire people into our MGI work. Cherylyn, how did you get involved? — Yeah, so it was uh my own personal micro to macro journey, I suppose. You know, after having kind of done the classic Mackenzie random wall, touched a bunch of different industries. Um I thought I wanted to zoom out and get a macro picture of macro trends and kind of do something that had broader impact than just maybe solving a specific problem for a specific client, right? Uh so after I made engagement manager I applied for a rotation at MGI. We now um accept both associates and BAS but also engagement manager level colleagues um on rotation and then I worked with SP on this book for a year and at the end of the year I guess they decided I was it was all right good enough. — And you liked it and so you stayed. — Yeah I liked it and I stayed as of February I'm now part of MGI. — Yeah that's exciting. — So part of their roles are full-time like the one you have now and parts are on rotation based on different projects. Yeah, — that's really exciting and it's also a great example of one of my favorite sloans is always make your own Mckenzie. It's like there different pathways like you said you moved offices now you moved your path into a different area in the firm Blair and I also examples of moving around and moving into different parts of our firm um and uh yeah exciting to hear your journey Cheryl — but without further ado let's maybe dive into the amazing book here. Yes, — it's an interesting perspective, right, to think about what you said at the beginning, Blair. Is it possible to bring everybody up to the standard of Switzerland? — Um, especially in a time when, you know

you read a lot of also negativity in the press and everything seems to be difficult and there's probably more doom and gloom uh than optimism out there right now. So, this is a very uh a very nice change to it. Um, and I know a book launch always goes with a lot of interviews, etc. So, we're really grateful that you're spending the time with us today. But what prompted you to write the book, Sven and Cherylene? What what made you think about this specific topic in particular? — So, it was actually a quite random thing that got it started and then it got fundamental. So, there our we were in a research meeting of MGI in London in November a year ago. So — Mhm. 24 — 14 15 months ago — and we were discussing what the research and not but we were also thinking about the firm was getting 100 years old and one of our former management partners uh Ian Davis — was in the room and he said you know you should actually start writing down as MGI what did we learn over the last 100 years — so I said what do you mean well and then we talked about a few things and he said there's so much I hear from you that I don't know is there a good way to write it out so we let it go and said maybe good idea and then we actually let it go almost and in general I said, "Okay, I'm going to ask Ian what did you really mean? " And I gave him 30 things that we did learn and said, "How many of these do you know? How many are interesting? " He said, "They're all interesting. " I knew 15. — H So he said, "Okay, that's worth it. " And then we got in the team. Sheron was there and many other people were there. And I said, "Of course, we're not going to only look back. — We're going to take it to the future. Where is this heading? " There are many reasons why I personally feel that's important. uh because if you look at Adelman trust surveys or many other places the number of young people that believe the future is going to be better than today or the progress that of their parents in particular if you go to the west it's different in India so different places are very different across the world — there's a substantial group that is not thinking that positively about the future so we wanted to explore is that fact or fiction and so that's part of what we did in the work — uh and then When we had our partner conference, which we celebrated 100 years, which was November last year, eight months after January, with 25 people, including Cherylyn, we actually did the book and I handed it to Ian and he thought he would get a cover with empty pages. The reality is it was fully written and the other managing partner sat there went through, oh it has McKenzie exhibits in it even. Yes, it had true. — This is not a madeup story. It has personal stories. MGI rigor to talk about the future of plenty. — Yeah, it's amazing. Uh, and it is a dense book, but it's an incredibly accessible one as well. So, um, urge everybody to read it. You know, Sven, you talked earlier about the sort of the overall alchemy of MGI is taking those micro insights and scaling them up to macro. Cherylyn, maybe you can get into the guts of this a bit. So it sounds pretty amazing to produce something of this depth in a relatively short amount of time. Bring us into sort of the team room so to speak. How how did this come together? So once the idea was sort of the seed was planted, — you all had to sprint. What did the work look like? How did this all come together? — Yeah. So actually it didn't look that different from like a typical MGI study where you have your kind of EM plus two or plus three team. um with the difference that because we needed this book out in nine months, we had two emm partner in crime couldn't have done it without him. Uh and so we kind of carved up the book. Initially we thought we would carve it up by one of us would focus on like the backward looking bit and one would focus on the forward-looking bit but then as we started to PS and write it we realized that you know there were kind of themes that uh spanned across from like historical uh to forwardlooking and so we ended up carving up the book differently. Um so it was a lot of you know problem solving on like what are the key insights we can take in like the energy space or in the demographic space right um and then as I mentioned earlier the collaboration across the firm you know we had lots and lots of problem solving sessions with uh experts from our global energy materials practice or our egg practice right like what's the latest in the world of food or energy you know what do you think could be a realistic future um where we were kind of painting the scenario of energy you know we talked to a nuclear expert to say you know is this kind of share of energy coming from nuclear is that something that's realistic that we in the forecast by the relevant institutes. So yeah, it was a big um collaborative exercise. — That's fun. And I love how both of you already shared right how you've drawn really on the expertise around the firm — um that you can just pick up the phone, call anybody and they're very happy to contribute to any project, but especially also of course a project that is this important. But let's dive into that book a bit more in particular. Not just talking about the you know how we got the book and the progress of process of writing it but looking back the central thesis of the book is the progress machine. Um that has made the advancements over the last century possible. Um so Sven can you share a bit

more about what that is the progress machine? what is the central thesis of the book and why do you believe we have actually a chance to live in a world of Switzerland in 2011. — So before I go to the machine I'm going to actually try everyone to have a personal experience right now. So I would all of you suggest to imagine your greatgrandparents. Maybe for some of you it's your great grandparents. For me it's my great-grandparents. My grandparents my parents and me as a youth in the life with my parents. My great grandparents were living in the Great Depression and had to do activity to stay active as unemployed which meant shoveling sand from left to right one day, next day from the right to the left and back and forth four years in a row. And basically you got stamps for food. That's 100 years ago. My grandfather was on a train to Poland. not a train that you would like somebody to be in. He was so lucky that there was a raid on the train at night. The train had to stop and he was lucky that the train door of the wagon he was in could be opened and the people in that wagon were freed that night with table silver 24 pieces in all. He went for two years undercover in Germany to survive the end of the war. I have five of those pieces at home um that were left over. The only thing that he left after he had bought food and stuff with that and I'm here because that happened. Uh my parents in the 70s were not allowed to drive on Sundays which because we were conserving oil in the oil crisis and the house prices had dropped 40% in the inflation crisis and the interest rate spike that happened. But I was roller skating on the highways on Netherlands and actually kind of liked it because uh you know what a roller skate on the highway it is and so on. If you go back this far, you in your own life stories will feel most of you, I'm sure one or two of you will actually have had some other events happen to you, but the majority, the vast vast majority of people will feel something like a six times progress in their life. And that that's economic progress. And I'll come to that in a moment. But you will feel that progress. When my daughter, 17year-old, started to read, as my youngest, uh, started to read the book, she uh, said, "Dad, you're talking about nostalgia bias. " And I had no idea what that was. Uh, I know biases because bias in decision-m is a core thing in strategy. But she said on Tik Tok, which I don't frequent that much, but I do. But she said on Tik Tok there's a whole section on nostalgia bias which basically says you remember the good stuff of the past but not even the train when you assess the sum total of the past and as a result you think the past is good. When you look to the future you remember every problem that you've experienced today but you actually don't integrate to the possible future. And so that is to me the first point to make. We made an enormous amount of progress. The machine that did that had eight cylinders. We got more workers because we had more population. We got more people in the workforce because in particular women joined the workforce. We got more invention. We became more knowledge economies. We added capital tools to people that physically moved us ahead. We used 10 times more energy per person because energy makes the world go around. We spent a lot of time discussing that, but basically we're not in a great place because we just invent stuff and make stuff. You're in a big house because you can heat it or cool it. — You're in a big car because you can drive it and so on. So that's part of it. Um, and I can keep going. There's more in the market economy. There's more knowledge economy and so on. So there's an 8-cylinder engine that has made progress. And of course, we ask ourselves, can we do it again? uh and the way we did that is what you guys gave away already in the beginning is we said can you imagine this is what I do when I go to clients and do this presentation I don't tell them about Switzerland and I say the following imagine a country where there's good wealth people trust the government people trust each other people uh have clean energy mostly the trains run on time the clocks run on time and if your young daughter turn comes late home from a party, naughty as she might be, she will be protected by at least three citizens and be brought home and not attacked by one. The country is safe. That country is Switzerland. And then we say, could you imagine that the entire world could make the same progress as your great-grandparents did to yourself to

basically go to uh Switzerland by 2100 and that would include Burundi. And if people then say Burundi that's not possible, can I please suggest you to watch an image of a toiling farmer in 1925 in Switzerland on a muddy hill near Terat or whatever is now a great ski resort who were toiling to make a life. That's not very different than the toiling that farmers in Burundi are doing now in droughts, which is a different challenge than the mud, but it's similar challenge. That is the central thing we're trying to do and we could talk a little bit more on how that future works but it make machine made us progress. Uh I should say one other thing sorry man going on a long time. One of people say you know you measure a lot of this progress in you know gross domestic product and economics and all of you who are considering to join McKenzie probably think GDP is good but lots of questions we get is but is it really good? It can't be only about the economy and of course not we don't do the economy for the economy's sake. We do it because associated with the GDP progress come all the goodies that Switzerland has. Mortality goes down, child mortality goes down, safety goes up, health goes up and so on and so on. So, so it's just a proxy for the progress. But the correlation with almost everything but inequality is a very strong positive. So that's why we are shooting for Switzerland in 2100. And is inequality is that not correlated Sven because that's those have to do with political choices etc. or what? — Sharon. Sheron. I'm going to throw it to Sheron. I'm — answer the hard questions go to Sheron. — Oh, perfect. Good. At least you get the credit. — I'm the storyteller and she will do the hard questions. — No, it's it is indeed a weaker correlation than the other metric that Sven mentioned. But that one is like a function of how societies choose to organize themselves. But that said, we have still seen that uh on average like richer countries do tend to be less unequal than poorer. — It's just that it's a weaker correlation. Um but one interesting insight that we unearthed as we were doing the research was that actually if you look at inequality across the world if you treated the whole world as a single country is actually the lowest that it's ever been um because of what we call the great convergence right like with the c the catchup of emerging economies like China and India actually billions of people have been lifted out of poverty so the world as a whole is actually less unequal than it used to be I love that and I think it's such a powerful again this is where the data is so telling that for every you know when you look at growth all the good things as you outline line spend increase in a society and the bad things decrease. But that's an interesting point, Sher Lind, that on the inequality front, at least collectively across the world, we're seeing that improve for everybody even though it's not as correlated as the other factors, which I think is fascinating. So, so how if we think about McKenzie's work and you mentioned earlier Sven, right? We work with the leaders of corporations, governments. uh how do we then say okay how do we accelerate towards this vision of plenty you me you mentioned sort of the eight cylinders of the progress machine that got here how are we working with the world's institutions to help supercharge those and actually drive us towards this vision of plenty — so first of all a lot of the future is in the making we're all and I'm sure you all on the on this live stream here are uh totally aware of AI technology from robots to the virtual part of AI helping us make progress that machine will therefore be a little different. In my time the engineering was about physical robots in factories and factory buildout and there was some virtual stuff happening but there was very little AIish stuff happening although there was some embedded AI and intelligence and all these things. — So we know that's a big engine the data centers for it are being built. But if you also go to the ingenuity of biotech and all that kind of stuff which we wrote in the paper the eight arenas of competition there's like 18 places where the future is being built. Now the question is at what scale we do it. Now one of the things that we are spending a lot of time on uh literally on a daily basis is actually first do a reframe of what we actually are aiming for because while we're today building all this stuff you could aim it in the old thought or in the plenty thought and let me just explain the old thought. You mentioned Blair the eight and a half times the economy to bring everybody to Switzerland at a population of 12 billion people. That's basically what that scenario is. The old scenarios if you go IPCC, IMF, World Bank and everything else, they don't predict 8. 5 times. They predict three times. — Yeah. — Per capita 8. 5 times because it includes more people still is six times. So the same progress as the last 100 years in the next 75. It's a acceleration but not a crazy acceleration. — Okay. — And I just want to say that 8. 5 is a reframe of everything because after that you need to build more, you need to do all kinds of things very differently. The energy debate becomes one of three times

energy, not one for one old and new. So everything changes when you embrace 8. 5. That to me is a very fundamental thing. when we go to clients but also when I talk to students I've done speeches for thousands and thousands of students by now they go this is a positive counterpoint in complex times that we don't hear — and the beginning of a reframe and that's actually part of why we wrote this book is not because we make a forecast this will happen but we do forecast that it can happen — and the people who say it cannot happen are potentially fundamentally [snorts] wrong — and so that goes to limits of growth and all that kind of stuff which I know has all kinds of connotations that are good and others that are a little bit more technically but we showed the possibility and once you embrace the possibility all your designs are different. — Mhm. — And so we're then talking to clients as you build out the stuff that is already in motion or the stuff that still needs to build. Are you doing that with the mindset that this could actually be even bigger than what we're discussing today? Because three times is big but it's but just to understand three times means Burundi will not reach Switzerland. India Indonesia will not reach Switzerland. Not China would even reach Switzerland. Whereas eight and a half times gets her there. And for those people who say that's there's going to be tight trade-off. There are trade-off discussions that we should debate and maybe Sheron you can illustrate one or two of those. Um I feel just understand the plenty is 70 to 80% poor people catching up with the rich. — Not going for plenty is denying the poor to get to call it western life. Why would you do that? — And like I like what you said Spven around the reframe, right? Because I think what you sometimes hear is like there's not enough food, there's not enough energy, there's not enough resources to be able to do that. And I think you disprove that it is possible um that you don't have restraints on that. It's more of a can you fundamentally really shift how we do certain things. — Yeah. — Sharon, you want to take one of the hard ones on that? — Exactly. I think something we found it's like it's more an issue of distribution necessarily than uh sufficiency of the things like so let's take food for example right actually the world already produces 1. 5 times the amount of food that's needed to feed everyone it's really a problem where is that food kind of going — we have a barbell problem where we have malnutrition and we also have obesity on the other end — um but to the point of do we have enough stuff what we did was quite vigorously kind of assess how much energy materials food innovation would we need to reach this world of 8. 5x GDP Um, and of course, could we do this without kind of blowing up the planet? Could we do it within planetary boundaries and respecting the climate? Um, and what we found was that across all of these dimensions really by just sort of applying historical growth rates and improvements, um, that's sufficient for us to be able to, you know, like extract that much materials out of the ground or produce that much food but on the same amount of agricultural land we have today. — Hey Sean, I think you threw the difficult one to me now. — Yeah. Because of course the big question on limits is always first and foremost climate. — Yeah. — So let's address that one head on. — When people were in COP uh they were debating where is it heading and it might be two or 2. 6 degrees. Of course nobody knows the last digits here. If we don't change course then there is net zero would be lower and maybe with that we hit 1. 5 but people are a little skeptical we reach net zero fast enough. So what is being discussed is in between that what's called a sustainable transformation that shaves the peak and does get us to where we need to be. Uh and that's sort of uh 1. 8 to twoish degrees. Now we can be uncomfortable with that but that's seemingly what's happening. Then we say if you just say okay that's with a three times economy in 2100. Now let's do an eight and a half times economy. Sorry that I go to real numbers here dear audience but I think you cannot get and Mackenzie goes to real numbers. So if you don't like numbers then you know we do it for the right thing but we do like the numbers here. — H but if you go to an 8 and a half times economy actually the 1. 8 to2 doesn't become much more. It's 1. 9 to 2. 1. Why is that? Because the marginal energy that you would produce and the resources that you would use to get to eight and a half times cannot be oil and gas or carbon intensive sources because that doesn't exist. We might maintain all the oil and gas that we have for a three times economy, but we might not be we will not be able to retain for eight and a half times. So it's almost baked in by going to eight and a half times that the marginal output will be cleaner. And I personally believe that could actually have a positive net knock effect on the rest getting clean because once you build the clean at this scale, it actually might become so darn cheap that it will actually do the rest too. And we will

use oil and gas for other stuff. So that's the hard one. And then we have a I had a long debate you know do we dare to write down 0. 1 degree more and then we said you made the trade-off do you really want to deny 70% of the people to catch up with prosperity for. 1 degree or not I understand if this if it we would had added two degrees I think I it would be irresponsible but 0. 1 with 8. 5 is a reasonable discussion to have — I'm glad we got into the math because I do think again that was such a uh that's such an important part of the MGI processes is painting the art to the possible through the actual data and actually looking at these insights as you have both looked backward to understand the progress machine and how we got here. I suspect you mentioned trade-offs earlier Sven. There have been things that have held us back on progress in the past. there's a reason that we have countries at different levels of prosperity today. — You know, what are some of those things that you think have hindered collective progress in the past and and what do you think is going to be critical for us to be able to overcome those going forward? So, you mentioned some of it is you know people not believing that things are possible, right? But what are some of the things that we need to do to actually be able to avoid what's held us back in the past? I don't know if that's a hard question for you, Cherylyn, or if you want to give a softball to Sven. You can decide. — Yeah, I think I will give the to Sven because I'm older and can look back. No, — humanity can go off track for 70 years in a row when we did communism in large swats of the world. Yeah. So, what we decide collectively of how we're going to set up our system of governance, our system of the economy or something makes a huge difference. And I understand capitalism and all that kind of stuff has its drawbacks in many dimensions. But at the same time, capitalism was underpinning a lot of this engine. Uh it drove productivity and so on. So somewhere the system in which we operate needs to have call it the rules based you know the enough rules and regulations and so on that you know you can invest and you can [clears throat] be profitable with your investment and that then happens and you see the variance in other places where this has not yet been achieved — is some of them didn't have that best governance for a long time but you now also see in Africa in Latin America in Asia many spots where with strong governance might be not always the way we are set up in Europe or the US or something like that where I live. Uh you know that variance does create uh is actually created by people pursuing a better holistic agenda on how a country is set up, how a region is set up and how it sets up its economy and the allows the actors to play. That to me is the largest thing. But you know we can be in mass delusions which I call communism at least the communism as executed whether it's the true communism that people wanted. We can have a long debate but you know state planning for farms doesn't work. We I think we've shown it but we can be off for 70 years and you know if you look at the difference that when China moved to another system again it's different than the western system but what it unleashed. So the flip is really about what are you trying to accomplish as a nation? Are you setting up a system that's adequate to achieve that? I know you make the point in the book that institutions are generally the slowest to adapt right to transformational change. How do you think about that balance? You mentioned regulation and obviously climate right there there's all sorts AI is a perfect example of where everybody is debating what the right regulation is to support innovation but to do it in thoughtful and ethical ways. — U many would say at the moment and I think it's becoming consensus so it's easier to say it now than 5 to 10 years ago that we probably overdid it on regulation a bit. Uh and we need to have smart strong regulation but not overly detailed regulation that controls everything because the real actor in the progress of the last 100 years but also in the next 100 years is within an institutional glue. It is individuals running a small business, individuals educating themselves, individuals having a job inside institutions called companies or delivery units. No, hospital might not be a company, but it's still trying to deliver health. — And it's these delivery units where prosperity gets created within the glue of institutions. If the glue is too tight or too hard or too dry, then you

know, nobody can go through it. If it's as smooth as honey, let's call it that way, the glue, then you know, uh, or it's good oil in the machine. So, if the institutions are bringing oil in the machine with boundaries, — it's good. If the institutions overdo it, it will be harder for the actors. Not impossible, but much harder for the actors to get it right. And the actors are the individuals that collect together in different forms of delivery of which companies have been a very large part. — Maybe let's stick given Blair and I are both in the people space. Maybe let's stick with the people and the individuals for a second because you highlight in the book also the importance of builders which you know intuitively makes sense. So people who translate ambition and dreams into actual physical reality and outcomes. Can you elaborate more on that? And what are some of the qualities that we need to strengthen in people in order to make this a reality? Like you said, Sven, it's not a forecast, it's a possibility. So how do we strengthen our people to make the possibility become more real? — You want to start m — Yeah. maybe a little bit less about builders, but like we talk a lot about the importance of human capital and I think this is one that's quite personal to me because we use my family stories to illustrate that, right? Like the Singapore government did really well post independence to kind of really emphasize the importance of education because they knew that people were one of our only natural resources. — Um and so I think this like focus on education and ensuring that your workforce is kind of staying up to date, especially now with the transition driven by AI, right? ensuring people are able to kind of update their skills uh is going to be increasingly important. We look at something called like the halflife of skills in that chapter and we know that that's actually shortened over time. Skills are staying relevant for a short and short amount of time. So it really kind of um reinforces how important it is to just continuously be learning — and upskilling so that you can kind of uh continue to contribute and build this society that we envision. — Maybe I'll just add building is not just in the virtual world. You know you we are a little virtual here although I think we're real people on the call here. — Uh but the reality check — not an avatar yet Blair. No the uh but so the real world needs to be built. We need lots of energy. We need roads. Uh whether that's for full self-driving cars or human-driven cars. We can have a long debate. Now I want to do one other reframe. Many people think AI is going to eat our jobs. I can't predict which job is going to work. 5 to 10 years ago we were saying go do software. That's the greatest thing. Now all the tech giants say that's the one pocket where AI is going to have progress to a degree that you shouldn't do it in the next three years. Why don't you go touch atoms and you know so it's all kind of complex. I'm not going to make a detailed prediction on that. But plenty makes a huge difference on this. Let's assume we are in 80% automation in a three times economy. — That means two days more free time. I remember when my dad and mother didn't need to go on Saturdays. That's two times days of free time. That might be just good or a bit too much. — Now we're in a eight and a half times economy and we automate 80% or even 90%. We will almost be short people. — It's a huge difference and that's exactly what happened in my view when we went from the farm to industry to services. — 98% of the people no longer work on farms but they are busy and unemployment is not for and we gained only one day. So maybe this one gains us two days or no days because we're going to 8. 5 times. That's sort of the range that I feel. Uh and you know the distortions in the short term will be big. Certain things will not work and not u and you know uh some people think the job that we do gets replaced. I don't believe that for one second. — Yeah. Go ahead Charlene. — Sorry I was going to just say the human element of it is not replaceable yet by any of the LLMs thankfully. Well, we talk about that quite a bit in our recruitment process is, you know, we believe the human centered skills. We've always, of course, not just evaluated people's problem solving capabilities and their cognitive capabilities. We very much care as client counselors about the human- centered skills, integrity, judgment, instinct, and those I think will be the X factor for us going forward. It's a really interesting I'm going to add so be careful what it's important to understand I think what McKenzie does and maybe that's useful for this group. What we do is the tide is coming in with large waves. Call that trends. We have pattern recognition because we serve thousands of companies while a company sits in its own boat. So we are in thousands of boats when the tide comes in. So we help interpret the tide a little better than somebody in 100 boats. We do it through the eyes of companies. The data inside companies are not public on the LLMs. They are not. The data in the head of the people inside companies are not and they I don't think they will be uh not even in 10 years because that's it. Why would a company release all its secrets

— but through the eyes of companies we see the tide coming in. The other thing that we do very well is and that's our role is help catch the tide or even jump over the tide and the waves and that requires the skill called helping companies transform which is both hard and human — and the hard part of helping companies transform I still don't think AI will do. Yes, the recoding of the IT will be done, — but there is still going to be a lot of judgment. Again, 80% automation may be possible. H but I just remember that when I because I'm the old guy in the room, I can say this. I remember one of my first jobs was standing on a ship with a counter trying to figure out how many bottles of uh soda were sold on a cruise ship and somebody else was doing on another boat and by that we established the cruise ship market, soda drinks market. Yeah, — that's probably do that different now. — Yeah, — but in that time McKenzie didn't shrink back to nothing. We actually went 10 times. Yeah. — So the idea that certain tasks get replaced means there's no work anymore. — I don't think so. There will be other work slightly different but it will not only be human. The hard skills of trying to figure out how the world really works is going to be very important. — Yeah. and how companies work and how institutions work and help them progress. — Yeah, we raise um and quite an interesting anecdote in the book which is that you know 100 years ago there was no such thing as dog hairdressers, right? There wasn't the market for it. But the fact of the matter is as the world has got more prosperous these new jobs that we couldn't have imagined 100 years ago now exist. And so I think to think that there'll be no jobs in 2100 is just you know a bit of a failure of imagination perhaps. — I love that. And uh yes, I going back to your comment about our great-grandparents. Could they have imagined taking their dogs to a groomer at some point? No, probably not. Not something that ever would have been. I love this. I mean, I think you're both making the beautiful case for both humans and a world of plenty and that humans are the core driver that will help us achieve that vision. I wonder if we might switch to a bit of advice for the folks who are listening today. So generally the folks who join us every month are people who are either entering the workforce, aspiring to be future leaders. Maybe they're interested in Mackenzie, maybe they're just interested in the pursuit of knowledge and excellence. Uh but these are the people who are going to be some of the humans I would bet on. I would love to hear your advice each of you. Cherylyn Sven, what's your advice for these humans who are going to help drive us toward the century of plenty? Uh so for me again defaulting to our Mackenzie rule of threes you know maybe three prongs I would say you know don't shy away from the heart problems so Spence's already kind of laid out right it's a lot about the energy transition so going to those spaces that matter right clean energy tech materials you know food AI um and then I already mentioned this but I think prioritizing this continuous upgrading of human capital to just continuously stay relevant as the workforce and skills change so quickly um and then the third one is maybe a little bit fluffier but I do think it's important um which is to remain optimistic and have this belief in progress and the importance of that. I — love that. — We can only build what we can dream of, right? — I love — And on that one, Sher, just a follow-up question. Has the writing the book done anything for you in terms of your optimism and outlook for the future? — Yeah. — Yeah, definitely. I think at the very onset of the study, like Sven came up with this brilliant framing of like not looking through the microscope and being bogged down by the negativity of the headlines, right? Um but looking through the telescope and in doing the research and seeing actually despite all the bumps in the road, humanity has made so much progress, it's really shown me how resilient we have been and we can continue to be even though there's obviously a lot of turmoil around us at present. — Love that. — I triple down on the optimism. — I will use a quote by David S. Landis who has the best quote on optimism. In this world, the optimists have it. Not because they're always right, but with their optimism, they are trying. And through trying and tinkering will shape the future that might be where it should be. The pessimist only has the consolidation of being right, but stop trying before being able to establish it. And I can keep going on that quote for a long time. I've seen you. The second piece, the second piece of advice I would have is many people come within their mind uh profound goals. I believe one of the worst things you can do is set a goal. — You I can set a goal now. I'm going to win the Olympics. First of all, it's not possible. Uh but I think the reality is you need to build your systems. What do I mean with systems? It's a set of skills. networks. It's a set of journeys in which you learn. And then I believe this my third piece of advice, harness the possibility of serendipity as you build your skills and your systems by observing the world around you, talking to lots of people, doing stuff with lots of people. The serendipity will let you feel where your meaning is, which I think is the only thing. I don't like the word purpose

whatsoever. I think it's the shallowest word that exists. I can predict the purpose of any company because a bicycle company's purpose is make bicycles companies make bicycles but and for you it's certainly not something like that. Meaning is something very personal — and by building your systems and building the serendipity around it and you will discover your meaning and as you've discovered your meaning your system will strengthen towards achieving that meaning which is far different than your goal. So for all those careers, — look at all the hearts flying here for you. — I know. — I could do an entire lecture on this. Maybe do it next time. But — great sto there's you could set your goal. I need to be em in two years. Really? I've been there 35 years. I was the first part-timer in Mckenzie in 1996 when part-timer wasn't existing. Probably that delayed me — one or two years. Others would say it accelerated me and I believe actually it accelerated me because I learned a lot from the pressures of being part-time. That's a system. Part-time is a system. And with that, serendipity follows and you can get there. Search meaning, not purpose. Don't seek some intermediate shallow goal of reaching a certain position. — I love that. — Well said. And — and a bit more optimism in the world. — That's right. I love this. — And first step for optimism is reading the book. — Exactly. — Buying the book, reading the book to get a bit of an optimistic different twist of the future. Sven Sherlin, thank you so much. This was fascinating, inspiring, illuminating uh and I am at least walking away feeling even more optimistic about our collective uh positioning over the next hundred years. So, thank you both so much for joining. — Thank you so much. Amazing. Thank you for all of us joining. See you next month. Bye. — Okay. Bye. Hey there.