2020 Wrap Up: A Flight of Black Swans is Called A Wedge. Read Why?

Matthew Le Merle
8 min readDec 21, 2020

Are You Ready For a Black Swan Event?

Back in the first few years of this century, we conducted a number of ‘Disruptor Strategy’ projects for some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated companies. These projects focused on helping them prepare for ‘Black Swan’ events. Events which by definition can not be predicted, are of very low frequency but very high magnitude. Even given this definition, organizations can certainly stress test their ability to cope with Black Swans. Those projects always included global pandemics in their long list of possible Black Swans, but they never got to the top of the list. Read the white paper that Matthew wrote on this topic by clicking here.

2020: Flight of Black Swans Top 10 List

As we wrap up 2020, this year has been remarkable for the Black Swan events that have changed our lives. For most of us the one that has dominated our thinking all of the time is this terrible pandemic and its horrible impact on our families, communities and businesses. But if you look closer, and use your 20:20 rear view vision, this year has actually had many more than 1 global Black Swan at work. In fact, 2020 will go down in history as a year in which we were surprised by a veritable ‘wedge’ of Black Swans.

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Matthew Le Merle

Matthew Le Merle is co-founder and Managing Partner of Fifth Era which manages Blockchain Coinvestors, and of Keiretsu Capital