Tomorrow, 26 November, is the U.S. national Thanksgiving holiday, a day designed to emphasize blessings while getting together with family and friends for a celebratory meal. There have always been numerous celebrations of thanks by various countries, religions and other groups going back to early recorded history. The U.S. holiday dates back to 1601 when the Pilgrims who had settled the year before in what is now Massachusetts decided to celebrate their first successful harvest. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November to be a national holiday for giving thanks. In 1939 President Roosevelt moved the holiday one week earlier to expand the Christmas shopping season in hopes that increased consumer spending w...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.