coboomEconomy, energy, AI and robustness: explore a topic or follow the ideas shaping our analysis.
46 articles found
Post 2026 · 33Robustness · Economy
People who read our posts, attend our talks, or work with Coboom almost always tell us the same thing: what we say makes people uncomfortable. We know it, and we own it, because many of the ideas we defend are grounded in scientific evidence that still sits well outside the Overton window.
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Post 2026 · 32Economy
The economic system no longer simply responds to our real needs. It constantly manufactures new ones to sell ever more superficial, often useless products and services, then presents this headlong rush as progress and innovation. The entire machine feeds on manufactured dissatisfaction: marketing creates it, credit finances it, planned obsolescence accelerates replacement, and social status turns overconsumption into a permanent competition staged on social media.
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Post 2026 · 31Robustness · Economy
British historian Arnold Toynbee, who studied the decline of civilizations, and American billionaire investor Ray Dalio, who studies the rise and fall of empires, arrive at a similar conclusion. Societies rise, plateau, and eventually decline.
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Post 2026 · 30Energy and resources · Economy
The real engine of economic growth has never been technology. It has always been energy surplus, and that surplus is precisely what is eroding today.
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Post 2026 · 29Business · Public policy
Quebec has just rolled out two loan programs to help businesses hit by the latest U.S. tariffs. The logic is straightforward: lend companies money to buy time while they adjust their business models, supply chains, and markets. But time is useful only if something actually changes. Nothing guarantees that trade relations with the United States will return to anything resembling the old normal, whether next year or ten years from now.
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Post 2026 · 28Energy and resources · Public policy
Canada is doing more than preparing its defense. It is turning militarization into a pillar of its economic strategy. Today, the country spends roughly $63 billion a year on defense, or 2% of GDP. By 2035, it plans to raise defense and security spending to 5% of GDP. This surge in largely unproductive spending will siphon off resources, talent, and billions of dollars that will no longer be available to the rest of the economy.
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Post 2026 · 27Economy
For too long, we have confused consumption with the economy itself. A consumption-driven economy follows a simple logic: generate more transactions, sell more, and accelerate the replacement of goods and services, even when essential needs are already largely met.
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Post 2026 · 26Economy · Business
Since the 1960s, growth in Canada’s real GDP per capita has slowed markedly from one period to the next. It averaged 3.1% per year between 1961 and 1979, then 1.5% between 1980 and 1999, and only 1.1% between 2000 and 2019. More recently, real GDP per capita declined by 1.3% in 2023 and 1.4% in 2024, before increasing by roughly 0.6% in 2025.
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Post 2026 · 25Robustness · Business
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” This quote, commonly attributed to Richard Buckminster Fuller, captures remarkably well the challenge ahead of us.
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Post 2026 · 24Business · Robustness
A Zen saying warns: “The person who reaches the goal has missed everything else.” That idea captures what often happens when revenue growth becomes the center of a company’s strategy, and even more so when the focus shifts almost entirely to EBITDA growth.
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Post 2026 · 23Business
Published in 1986, Michael E. Gerber’s bestselling book The E-Myth remains remarkably relevant today. It is a book we recommend to every entrepreneur, especially for one simple but powerful idea: most businesses are created by technicians who master their craft and eventually decide to build a company around it.
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Post 2026 · 22Business
In May, HEC Montréal’s Centre for Productivity and Prosperity – Walter J. Somers Foundation published its annual study. One finding caught our attention in particular: better-managed companies tend to be led by people with higher levels of education.
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Post 2026 · 21Economy · Energy and resources
One of the most fascinating differences between China and the West lies in the backgrounds of their political and economic elites. Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua University and emerged from a long technocratic tradition: in 2002, all nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee had engineering backgrounds.
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Post 2026 · 20Technology and AI · Economy
Since the first Industrial Revolution more than two centuries ago, businesses have been trying to produce more with less human labor. Across three industrial revolutions, that pursuit mainly meant replacing physical work with machines that became increasingly powerful, faster, and more productive.
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Post 2026 · 19Technology and AI · Business
In 1965, American chemist and physicist Gordon Moore, who would later co-found Intel, made an observation that would reshape the global economy. The number of transistors on an integrated circuit was doubling roughly every two years, driving a spectacular increase in computing power. That dynamic, later known as Moore’s Law, would propel the digital economy for decades.
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Post 2026 · 18Energy and resources · Public policy
When energy security and economic growth come under pressure, political priorities shift quickly. Environmental goals are pushed aside as soon as they conflict with access to abundant energy and the pursuit of growth.
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Post 2026 · 17Economy
At Coboom, we deliver about a hundred public talks each year on the economy and the long-term trends that have been reshaping it for decades. In those talks, we cover roughly a dozen of the more than 120 long-term trends our team tracks to understand the forces that will shape businesses and communities.
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Post 2026 · 16Economy · Business
The rapid and forced transformation of the economy will create many zombies by 2040: sectors, products, and services whose decline will become inevitable, yet into which we will keep pouring capital, infrastructure, and public money as if their future were guaranteed.
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Post 2026 · 15Technology and AI · Business
As the economy slows and artificial intelligence spreads at breakneck speed, a wave of layoffs is hitting white-collar workers. The first roles to disappear are often those whose real usefulness is difficult to explain, sometimes described as “bullshit jobs,” along with management positions devoted mainly to moving information up and down the hierarchy.
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Post 2026 · 14Economy · Energy and resources
An old legend tells of a king who, impressed by the invention of chess, offered its creator any reward he wanted. The inventor asked for one grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, then twice as much on each following square. The king agreed, amused by what seemed like a trivial request.
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Post 2026 · 13Robustness · Business
The more unstable the world becomes, the more we try to optimize our businesses, supply chains, and systems. Yet this relentless pursuit of performance is precisely what reduces our ability to adapt when conditions change.
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Post 2026 · 12Energy and resources · Economy
You may remember the scene in The Matrix where the main character must choose between two realities. The blue pill allows him to remain inside a comfortable illusion, while the red pill forces him to see the world as it really is.
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Post 2026 · 11Robustness · Business
The near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz has become a brutal wake-up call. In a matter of months, a maritime passage thousands of kilometers from Quebec has been enough to disrupt global energy flows, supply chains, and operating costs for countless businesses. Today, visible traffic through the Strait remains only a fraction of its pre-war level.
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Post 2026 · 10Energy and resources · Public policy
For many Quebecers, the Strait of Hormuz feels worlds away from the neighborhood grocery store. Yet this maritime passage is a critical artery of our globalized food system.
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Post 2026 · 9Technology and AI · Business
As AI accelerates, some predict massive job destruction while others point out that every industrial revolution eventually created more jobs than it destroyed. Both can be right, but not at the same time.
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Post 2026 · 8Energy and resources · Economy
Since 2021, in our consulting engagements and conferences, we have been highlighting a constraint that development strategies still fail to fully integrate: the fundamental role of oil in keeping businesses and communities functioning. Oil accounts for less than 30% of global energy demand, yet it powers the most vital part of our economy: movement.
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Post 2026 · 7Robustness · Economy
In our recent posts, we have discussed the weakening foundations of our economy and socioecological systems. One mechanism makes this degradation even more dangerous: our ability to get used to it until it feels normal.
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Post 2026 · 6Energy and resources · Economy
In two recent posts, we described our economy as a Tower of Babel and a collective Dinner for Schmucks, where we keep running faster to feed a machine that demands ever more on a finite planet. We also pointed out that the word “economy” originally meant the art of managing the household well.
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Post 2026 · 5Economy · Energy and resources
Weak sustainability and strong sustainability: this distinction fundamentally changes how companies and municipalities approach development.
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Post 2026 · 4Robustness · Public policy
Over the past two weeks, we have shared two analogies to illustrate the dominant economic paradigm: an economy that keeps drawing more heavily on human, natural, financial, and technological resources in order to sustain growth, even as the biosphere that makes that economy possible comes under increasing pressure.
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Post 2026 · 3Economy · Public policy
Last week, we compared the economy to a Tower of Babel. This week, we are proposing a more human analogy, inspired by the French film The Dinner Game. In that dinner, no one thinks they are the ridiculous one, and that is precisely what makes the situation so unsettling.
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Post 2026 · 2Business · Robustness
In the roughly 50 public conferences our team delivers each year, one question comes up again and again: which economic sectors are most at risk of major disruption over the next few years? Our view is clear: the financial and quaternary sectors could be among those most exposed to significant contraction over the next decade, not because of ideology, but because of growing physical, energy, and economic constraints.
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Post 2026 · 1Business · Robustness
For more than 35 years, our founder, Jean-Pierre Dubé, an engineer, has worked on improving the overall performance of companies. Over the course of his career, he has supported more than 2,000 companies in about ten countries, yet one of the most important lessons of his career was passed on to him very early.
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Post 2025 · 14Energy and resources · Public policy
Greenland is attracting growing attention from major powers for reasons that go far beyond geography. Its mineral resources, access to the Arctic, and military importance make it increasingly strategic in a world where supply chains are becoming more vulnerable and governments are seeking greater control over critical resources. In September 2026, the United States, Denmark, and Greenland signed a new agreement allowing an expanded U.S. military presence on the island.
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Post 2025 · 13Energy and resources · Public policy
Several people have asked us how to understand the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and what it could mean for the economy and for Quebec businesses. One useful way to look at it is to go beyond politics alone and consider a factor that is often underestimated: energy.
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Post 2025 · 12Business · Robustness
For years, we have observed the same pattern in our work with SMEs: advisory services are used mostly by a small minority of leaders whose companies are already relatively strong. By contrast, the SMEs that could often benefit the most from structured support are frequently the least likely to seek it.
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Post 2025 · 11Economy · Robustness
Since the spring, we have published about a dozen articles on the profound shifts reshaping our economy. Through our research, our work, and our conversations with businesses and economic development leaders across Quebec, one conviction has become increasingly clear: we are reaching the end of an era.
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Post 2025 · 10Public policy · Robustness
Barriers are rising, trade threats are multiplying, and tariffs are once again at the center of Canada–U.S. relations. What many see as a break from decades of cooperation can also be understood through the lens of realpolitik: when power struggles intensify, governments tend to place greater emphasis on their own economic, industrial, and strategic interests.
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Post 2025 · 9Business · Robustness
We are entering a period in which business development can no longer be approached the way it was in the past. Announcements about the possibility of artificial general intelligence, with learning and reasoning capabilities comparable to those of humans, are becoming more frequent. At the same time, the metacrisis is reshaping the foundations of the economy: climate change, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, high public and private debt, geopolitical tensions, and growing military conflict.
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Post 2025 · 8Business · Robustness
We now live in a world where instability and uncertainty have become the norm. Every day, companies are expected to do more, move faster, deliver, adapt, and absorb new disruptions simply to maintain their position.
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Post 2025 · 7Economy · Public policy
On June 24, Quebec’s National Holiday, we believe Quebec already has much of the knowledge, resources, and capabilities needed to collectively build a fifth socioeconomic revolution. What we still need most is the courage to rethink political and economic models that are becoming less suited to the world ahead.
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Post 2025 · 5Technology and AI · Business
Generative AI is everywhere. It dominates headlines, conferences, and debates, while fueling both excitement and concern. It can already automate certain tasks, accelerate data analysis, generate content, and transform jobs and business models. Yet many Quebec companies are still hesitant to move forward, not because they lack interest, but because they are unsure where to start.
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Post 2025 · 4Robustness · Business
For several months now, we have been speaking with a growing number of business leaders who feel they are navigating without a clear line of sight. The slowdown is setting in, and since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, uncertainty has become a real source of anxiety for many. Margins are shrinking, sales are softening, costs are rising, and supply chains are becoming less predictable. The same question keeps coming up: how do we get through a period this unstable, especially if it lasts?
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Post 2025 · 3Technology and AI · Business
As early as the late 1980s and early 1990s, our founder, Jean-Pierre Dubé, an automated production engineer from the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) in Montreal, was already working on industrial applications of artificial intelligence. He designed a neural network to control an industrial process, followed by an expert system to capture the knowledge of a metallurgical engineer who was about to retire.
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Post 2025 · 2Business · Robustness
Since January 2025, we have spoken with hundreds of business leaders and economic development professionals across Quebec. One impression keeps coming back: a growing sense of vulnerability in the face of an environment where uncertainty has become almost permanent.
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Post 2025 · 1Economy · Robustness
Every week, we speak with business leaders, government officials, and economic development professionals across Quebec. Most are focused on growth, yet very few are asking a more uncomfortable question: which sectors, products, or services may already be on borrowed time?
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