Worthless, Impossible and Stupid

INTRODUCTION

Surprise

At a recent conference at MIT on business opportunities in Brazil, one of the speakers summed up: “In a word, Brazil is juicy.” He was not referring to the “juice” of electricity, but in Sorocaba, twenty-five miles west of São Paulo, Bento Koike and the venture he founded, Tecsis Wind, have shipped over 12,000 fifty-meter wind turbine blades that operate 24/7 in the wind farms of North America and Europe. Virtually all of Koike’s critical raw materials come from the Northern Hemisphere, and all of his customers are there as well. The value—the real “juice”—is created and captured in Brazil.

Six thousand miles away in Reykjavik, Iceland, a few dozen Actavis executives power the activities of the world’s fourth-largest generic ...