Rebuilding Ukraine: Huge opportunity, huge risks?

I’ve been asked to offer a public lecture for Ukraine by the DTEK Academy, the learning and development arm of one of the country’s leading energy providers. As we bring 2022 to a close, I thought I would share some of the contents of that talk.

Image source: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/26/1100501433/heres-how-much-it-could-cost-to-rebuild-ukraine-and-who-would-pay-for-it

The tyranny of uncertainty

Human beings are truly terrible at dealing with uncertainty. Our forecasts are almost always wrong, particularly for major, expensive projects. The Big Dig in Boston. The California bullet train to nowhere. The Iridium project. We’re overly optimistic. Sometimes we are politically motivated to push misleading information. And sometimes we just take action because we feel rushed and want to “do something.”

While this matters a lot under normal circumstances, it has huge implications for a project as potentially massive as rebuilding Ukraine in a post-war world. By some accounts, it could be the biggest common project the West has undertaken since the Marshall Plan after World War II. It could be a trillion dollar opportunity for those brave enough to take the risks. This is where my concept of being discovery-driven and Bent Flyvbjerg’s research on mega-projects intersects. Both of us…