The below is an interview I did with the LangFest organisers. Le dessous est mon interview avec les organisateurs du LangFest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn_2piPkaK4 #LangFest19 #LangFestConferenciers www.kailchan.ca Кай Л. Чан 
A letter to the Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW). July 10, 2019 (Volume 119, Number 15) The article on economic mobility (Life of the Mind, May 15) seems to confuse economic mobility with economic growth. Most economists measure economic mobility as intergenerational movement along the income-distribution ladder (rather than by absolute incomes). That is, to what extent do offspring track their parents’ position on the income distribution ladder at similar age profiles. The fact that 90 percent of children born in 1940 ended up earning more money than their parents was a result of a post-war economic boom whose gains were broad across the population. That only 50 percent of those born in the 1980s earn more than their parents is largely because median income has stagnated since about 1980 in spite of growth in average income, due to increasing income inequality; i.e. growth has been mostly captured by the elite. Yes, economic mobility is lower now than before, but this is expressed through what economists call the income beta: how well an offspring’s position in income distribution is predicted by their parents’ standing. A higher beta (lower mobility) — what we see now relative to the past — means (broadly… 
Savvy business owners understand that there is a multitude of opportunities in targeting foreign audiences. After all, native English speakers only make up 4.9% of the global population. But translation strategy is more than producing your content in various languages and sending it out to the world in hopes of attracting new audiences. A plan for prioritizing the languages you target will lead to quicker returns and better efficiency. First, if your research shows that you have a strong demand in specific locales but haven’t yet translated your content for them, then you have some low hanging fruit to pick. But what if you’re launching a new product or you’re already established your in primary foreign markets and aren’t sure where to target next? In this post, we’ll provide the ten best languages for business and why you should consider targeting them for translation. The Most Useful Languages for Business When researching which languages to target, a common approach is to focus on the world’s most popular languages. While this is a good starting point, it fails to consider cultural and diplomatic factors that directly correlate with the translation ROI of a language. Dr. Kai Chan of INSEAD has published a report that tackles… 
The dominance of English worldwide as a lingua franca is well documented, but there are other languages that can also afford their speakers more power than others. Speaking a language can help you unlock a host of opportunities, whether it’s to travel overseas or perhaps connect with another language group in your own country. Some languages have the ability to unlock more opportunities than others, and speaking certain languages can positively alter an individual’s life prospects quite dramatically. So how do you measure the power and importance of a language? One obvious way to do that is to count how many people speak it. But that’s less helpful than asking who speaks that language. Languages gain power if they are used by powerful groups, whether that’s measured in economic, political or military terms. In colonial countries, it’s common for a small language group to dominate over a much larger language population. So the number of people speaking a language is less important than the power that group holds. Sharing a language with a relatively powerful group empowers the individual and tends to open up a greater set of opportunities for them. Measuring power in language The Power Language Index (PLI)… 
BUSINESS INSIDER FRANCE Chisato Goya 24 Mai 2019, 14:23 NB: Text below changed from article to reflect that spending on education is expressed per capita (par tête), not per student. https://www.businessinsider.fr/classement-pays-meilleurs-resultats-scolaires-que-france Dépenser plus ne garantit pas forcément de meilleurs résultats. Cette affirmation est vraie dans différents domaines, dont l'éducation. Kai L. Chan, professeur émérite de l'INSEAD Innovation & Policy Initiative, a classé différents pays en fonction du retour sur investissement en matière d'éducation et a partagé les résultats de ses calculs dans un article publié sur un blog de l'école. Il en ressort notamment que les Etats-Unis sont le pays qui dépensent le plus d'argent par étudiant en études supérieures ce qui n'empêche pas, dans l'ensemble, qu'ils ne soient classés qu'en 42e position pour le GMAT, un test standardisé en anglais qui permet de mesurer les compétences jugées importantes pour l'étude du management. Selon des chiffres fournis par Kai L. Chan à Business Insider France, plusieurs pays ont obtenu de meilleurs scores au classement PISA (évaluation visant à tester les compétences des élèves de 15 ans en lecture, sciences et mathématiques) et au test GMAT par rapport à la France alors qu'ils disposaient d'un budget public par étudiant inférieur à… 
I was a guest lecturer at the University of Hong Kong in their School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPACE) in 2019: "Managing public services in the transitional nature of Bangladesh: Institutional integrity, sustainable development, and advanced technology applications." The programme had two intake groups (Feb 18-Mar 1, and Mar 18-29). The below are the titles of my lectures as part of their executive education course. AI and inequality: How smart machines exacerbate demographic bias and inequality Policy workshop on advanced technology applications: Innovations and policy initiatives Policy workshop on advanced technology applications: Policy cycles, implementation gaps, and case studies Bangladesh’s competitiveness landscape: Competitiveness and positioning of Bangladesh in global performance indices in the 21st century 
I spoke at the Montreal office of Oliver Wyman, sharing my experience of life after consulting and as a global expat. The presentation can be found here. 
AI AND INEQUALITY: HOW SMART MACHINES EXACERBATE DEMOGRAPHIC BIAS AND INEQUALITY Date: Friday, January 11 2019, 1230 – 1400 Venue: Asia Global Institute, MB 328, 3/F Main Building, HKU How does AI generate riches, redistribute wealth and distort the labour market in multicultural societies? How will AI distort off-shoring and upend the traditional development model? As AI displaces humans from their jobs, economic value will be transferred from labour to capitalists, particularly the ‘super-elites’. In an era where capital is mobile while labour is less so, AI will exacerbate already-high levels of inequality if left unmanaged. The slides can be found here. https://youtu.be/EBvrc-NPhaM 
Kai L. Chan, Distinguished Fellow, INSEAD Innovation & Policy Initiative | December 26, 2018 [caption id="attachment_3750" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The key to fostering a more educated populace is not financial – it’s cultural.[/caption] The key to fostering a more educated populace is not financial – it’s cultural.In measuring performance in education or healthcare, societies often mistakenly focus on inputs rather than outcomes. That is, it is common to erroneously measure success by counting the resources devoted to it. But expenditures do not equal success. Indeed, societies would like to spend – for an equivalent outcome – as little as possible. The United States is the global leader in dollars spent per student in tertiary education, yet its students rank 42nd globally on the GMAT, a standardised test used primarily for admission to post-graduate schooling. There is a similar disconnect between inputs and outputs for the PISA, a test administered by the OECD to a broad sample of 15-year-old students. Luxembourg spends the most in absolute terms per student in the primary and secondary stages of education, yet ranks 32nd on the PISA. If expenditures were calibrated against the size of the economy, the global leader in education would be Botswana. Figure 1 below shows the relationship… 
L’anglais, trop fort ANTOINE ROBITAILLE Mardi, 6 novembre 2018 05:00MISE à JOUR Mardi, 6 novembre 2018 05:00 Je suis tombé hier par hasard sur un texte intitulé « Is the English language too powerful ? ». (La langue anglaise est-elle trop puissante ?) L’auteur, Kai Chan, est « distinguished fellow » à l’INSEAD (l’Institut européen d’administration des affaires). Il a grandi à Toronto, mais conseille entre autres le gouvernement des Émirats arabes unis. Chan met des chiffres sur ce qu’on sait intuitivement, soit que la langue anglaise n’a peut-être jamais été aussi forte : c’est la « langue des sciences, des affaires et de la recherche », écrit-il. Le chercheur a dressé un « Power Language Index » (PLI), sorte de palmarès, afin de déterminer quelle est la langue « la plus utile dans la vie d’une personne, dans une perspective mondiale ». Sans surprise, dans le PLI, l’anglais a le score le plus élevé, 0,889. Le mandarin ? 0,411. « Ainsi, écrit Chan, non seulement l’anglais est la langue la plus puissante, elle l’est deux fois plus que sa plus proche rivale. » Montréal Dans sa note publiée par le World Economic Forum, le chercheur se penche sur le cas de Montréal. Il souligne ceci :… 
