What Are the Institutional Voids in the United States?

Innovate Where it Matters

Yields moving forward is likely going to have to come from bringing about more jobs in the industries that would need it. That means thinking about what is lacking in our present society today and and meeting those institutional voids. Further, it means creating companies to address real problems.

Remember as a Harvard professor notes “when the specialized services needed to facilitate the matching of buyers and sellers are underdeveloped, the market is emerging rather than emerged. The United States still has vast segments where it is still seen as emerging.

The coronavirus shows that there are many voids present within the system today. It’s something that’s painful to see in regular times but worse in times of crisis.

These voids are seen in states competing over PPE, masks, and ventilators and other necessary items. It seen in how there seems to be a lack of preparation overall to face such a crisis and how it has affected jobs in the present. We all expect to recover from the crisis but at what cost? How do we prepare and build better now for an improved and more robust system?

The question to ask here is not just about what is the present society lacking but where should it be in the next twenty years or forty years? What does the United States look like when we get there? That’s what present investors should look for as they search for yield in a world where many bonds are yielding negative interest. Investing today is about understanding what issues are affecting everyone.

Investing isn’t just about placing time into research and looking at where the world is headed but understanding where it is at the current moment in time.

For instance, there’s a growing population of workers that are lacking the benefits offered by traditional employers, creating more accessible programs and tailoring it to this growing population is likely to provide more yield. Then there are other problems that are more infrastructural like the Detroit water crisis that has affected at least 141,00 households. We’re seeing a rise in healthcare costs and other problems that are affecting everyday US citizens.

Hidden problems such as the rise in Internet subscription costs and others also affect the quality of life of Americans. Then there are those that are more abstract such as mental health and work life balance.

Institutional voids in the United States, then, are lack of accessibility to healthcare, and education, potential declining quality jobs, hidden costs in utilities like the Internet among other key issues.

Understanding these and helping to solve them is where the true value will lie over the coming decades. Not fixing these problems will only incur more debt when random events such as another coronavirus were to occur. It would be akin to attacking an already fragile system.

That’s why there’s value in solving these problems.

Shaffi Mather, a thriving businessman looked into providing accessible medical transportation in India. He started with one transport vehicle and now has more than a hundred. It seems like a small problem and a small solution but it makes a world of a difference. There is an institutional void in quickly transporting emergency care individuals to the hospital, in such as time, speediness is necessary. His solution is called DIAL 1298 and improves the process of transportation. DIAL 1298 was the first on the scene during the Hotel Mumbai incident.

Technological Solutions

Many of these problems can be minimized by the integration of technology.

New frontiers in technology include artificial intelligence, an energy revolution, the new space race, blockchain/cryptocurrency, and the internet of things.

For one to be robust in this world, one would likely spend time preparing for a role in the growing technology sector, whether it be a cloud architect, a product manager, solar energy technician, or an SEO expert. You’ll have to comprehend data and allocate your time to solving the right problems within the sector and then use your skills to solve problems in society, institutional voids and otherwise.