The Typical Investment Personality 57assignment, as an equity research analyst, was to add a column of
numbers. I had an HP calculator and a sheet of figures written in
pencil. I added the numbers, got three different answers, took the
mean, and gave it to my boss. (He then checked my results and
corrected my answer, which left me wondering why he had given
me the assignment in the first place.) I progressed in this job to
producing spreadsheets of earnings forecasts for various compa-
nies—again by hand, with a calculator, erasing the old assump-
tions and pencilling in the new numbers. In short, I was a glorified
computer. I was doing the left-brain, logical number crunching that
computers excel at, and for this I was paid reasonably well.
Why is it that computers can beat chess champions like Gary
Kasparov and bridge experts like Omar Sharif? Because computers
never forget and never make careless mistakes. Therefore, the value
of humans with these sorts of left-brained skills is minimal. Com-
puters can now crank out results that are cheap and error-free.
Creative right-brain thinking is different. So far, no computer
can match the right brain’s capacity to synthesize new information
and create new models. The Wall Street Journal picked up on this
idea in an article entitled, “A New Model for the Nature of Busi-
ness: It’s Alive!” (Feb. 26, 1999). The idea in the article is that a
major shift is occurring in thinking about business, away from the
mechanistic model to an organic model. Some of the comparisons
are shown in Figure 7.2.
What struck me as most significant, though, was the final
comparison, labeled “Main economic constraint.” It used to be
capital. Money. Without dough, no business could be successfully
launched. The constraint has now become creativity. No longer is
it necessary to find angels with deep pockets to start new ventures.
An example? Consider Toys ‘R’ Us and eToys. The former is a
huge operation with more than 1,000 stores, 30,000 employees,
and $12 billion in revenues. In contrast, eToys is less than a year
old at this writing; it has no stores, only 300 employees, and only
$100 million in revenues. The kicker? The market places a value07 ware 57 1/19/01, 1:09 PM