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Part of the reason? The traditional art of fortune-building used to pay off only after decades of perseverance, focus, and patience. Today, however, the scalability of technology allows an aspiring entrepreneur to go from zero to hero in a few short years. With a bright idea and skillful execution, a billion-dollar fortune can be made almost overnight. The Top 10 Billionaires in Tech The speed of technology is reflected in the following infographic from ERS Solutions, which covers the wealthiest 10 billionaires in tech....

To put that in perspective, more gold is traded in London each day than what is stored at Fort Knox (4,176 tonnes). On a higher volume day, amounts closer to total U.S. gold reserves (8,133.5 tonnes) can change hands. How is this possible? The infographic below tells the story about gold’s foremost trading hub, as well as the paper gold market in London, England: Image courtesy of: BullionStar London is dominant in global price discovery for gold....

This chart from Our World in Data compares the average time allocated across various day-to-day activities, from paid work to leisurely activities. The data for the 33 countries profiled come from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Time Use database, for ages 15 through 64 years old. Countries with the Highest Time Spent Per Activity As the chart shows, basic patterns—work, rest, and play—emerge across the board. When it comes to paid work, Japan emerges the highest on this list with approximately 5....

While your wealth is most likely driven by the dollars in your bank account and the value of your stock portfolio and house, wealth also includes a number of smaller things as well, such as the old furniture in your garage or a painting on the wall. From the macro perspective of a country, wealth is even more all-encompassing — it’s not just about the assets held by private households or businesses, but also those owned by the public....

Chart: The Largest Companies by Market Cap Over 15 Years The Oil Barons have been replaced by the Whiz Kids of Silicon Valley The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays. By definition, the largest companies by market cap are the most valued by investors in absolute terms. At the end of the day, however, a snapshot of the largest companies at a given time tells us what the market valued the most....

Transportation emissions often make up the largest portion of our individual carbon footprints. For that reason, evaluating transport options is a natural place to start, whether it is for a daily commute or a leisure trip abroad. So, what’s the most eco-friendly way to go from one place to another? The above infographic charts the carbon footprint of transportation per passenger-kilometer for different vehicles based on data from the UK Government’s methodology paper for greenhouse gas reporting....

Following the recent trend of tech IPOs outnumbering and out-hyping the competition, software has led the way. Cloud storage company Snowflake raised $3.4 billion in the largest ever software IPO, while gaming software developer Unity completed an IPO above its target price for a total of $1.3 billion and big data firm Palantir opted for a direct listing for a valuation of $22 billion. More big names are still on the horizon....

Community Solar Farms Taking Off in 2015 [Chart] Total installations of community solar farms to jump sevenfold in two years. The Chart of the Week is a weekly feature in Visual Capitalist on Fridays. Through the last five years, on average there was only 13 MW of new community solar farm installations per year in the United States market. To put this in perspective, the country as a whole put in 6....

Since the pandemic began, there have been innumerable tracking resources made available online, but rarely do they paint a complete picture of a country’s containment progress. How Much Progress Is Really Being Made Featured above, this continuously updated chart from Our World in Data provides a more complete look at the efficacy of COVID-19 containment strategies, sorted by country. It is a variation of the Epidemic Curve (or “epi curve”), showing confirmed COVID-19 cases per country in relation to their testing rates—what’s revealed is the strength of each country’s containment strategy....

Since the S&P 500 market high on February 19, 2020, market capitalizations across BEACH industries—booking, entertainment, airlines, cruises, and hotels—have tumbled. The global airline industry alone has seen $157B wiped off valuations across 116 publicly traded airlines. Investor confidence in cruise lines has also dropped. Between Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, over half of their market value has evaporated—equal to at least $42B in combined market capitalization....

There is real money and real management behind every company—but surprisingly, not every company has a concrete strategy to build a business and create value for shareholders. Business Plan, or Lack Thereof? Today’s infographic comes to us from Eclipse Gold Mining and it shows you how to avoid common mistakes when evaluating and investing in mining exploration stocks. Specifically, we look at five ways that potential investors can detect the presence and viability of a mining company’s business plan....

Today’s infographic comes from TitleMax and it looks at 14 now-defunct car brands and the circumstances that took them from highways to bygones. These are only a selection of a much longer list of car brands that have not survived to see the present day. What accounts for the churn rate of these brands? Bold Experiments, Boondoggles, and Burnouts Some car brands, like Tucker and Saturn, introduced new ideas that the market simply didn’t care for, didn’t perform as well as the competition, or were too ambitious for the industry climate....

History is full of trade wars. In the majority of cases, the consequences are mostly economic – trade barriers are enacted, and then retaliatory measures are used to counter. Relations can continue to escalate until an understanding can be reached by both parties. In the minority of cases, trade wars can lead to world-changing consequences. You may remember that the Boston Tea Party of 1773 was a bold response to an unfair trade measure imposed by a ruling power, and it proved to be a key catalyst that led to the American Revolution....

Mobile payments, for example, is a market growing at a 39.2% annual clip, and it will be worth nearly $3 trillion by 2020. At the same time, it’s almost impossible to keep up with the growth in the blockchain world. Every day, new technical problems are being solved, coin market caps are hitting new highs, and Bitcoin is dominating the news cycle. But, payments hasn’t always been this fast-moving or exciting....

Over your lifetime, the consumption of media and entertainment has already changed drastically. For Boomers and Gen Xers, the shift has been earth-shattering. Both generations will remember a time before mainstream computing when TV was dominated by the Big Three TV networks (NBC, ABC, and CBS), and newspapers and magazines were the main way to stay in touch with what was happening. Even millennials have seen fundamental shifts in consumption of media....

As a company like Tesla has discovered over its relatively short history, the manufacturing processes required to make thousands of cars at scale are extremely costly and ridden with unexpected setbacks. To make matters worse the vehicle market is ultra competitive, with very little room for error. Unless you have a game-changing innovation, powerful brand loyalty, or strong cost leadership, it’s easy to have your lunch eaten by competitors – or to get gobbled up in the industry’s next M&A transaction....

Imagining the Future of Design and Collaboration New technologies are getting adopted faster and faster. In the modern business environment, it no longer takes multiple decades for new ideas to take root. Instead, thanks to increased connectivity, instantaneous communication, and big leaps in computing power, these new innovations can rise to prominence in much shorter time spans. As these changes surface, companies can either help pioneer these new technologies – or they can be caught off guard by their impact on industry....

The increase in food supply required to feed this many people is difficult to fathom, but even that would just be scratching the surface of our future food needs. Today’s infographic, which comes from Raconteur, makes it clear that the challenge of feeding the global population is actually magnitudes greater. The global diet is changing rapidly in both size and composition, especially in developing countries in Africa and Asia....

In the distant past, loading a ship was a complicated affair involving pallets, crates, and winches. This process was labor-intensive and expensive, meaning most goods were simply not worth shipping overseas. In the 1970s, the standardized shipping container solved this problem on a wide scale and turned the world economy on its head. This standardization drove the cost of shipping down as the efficiency of ports skyrocketed. Modern ports can now move upwards of 70 containers per crane per hour....

However, achieving a sustainable rate of innovation isn’t necessarily a straightforward exercise. The reality is that innovation is a complex and difficult outcome to measure, and there are many different variables that factor into it at a national level. Research and development (R&D) expenditure is certainly one of these factors – and while it doesn’t always directly correlate with innovation outcomes, it does represent time, capital, and effort being put into researching and designing the products of the future....