Jack Guttentag, The Mortgage Professor. Guttentag is a living legend in global housing finance. If ever we had a hero - Jack tops our list - and we’ve never even met him in person! He is one of the key drivers behind the industry’s best training forums, the International Housing Finance Program at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and founder of mortgage technology innovator GHR Systems. Of all of the brilliance, bluster and ego that drives the global mortgage industry, who else with such massive and legitimate credibility would give power to the people (the consumers) through the free advice he personally gives on his simple website “The Mortgage Professor”. His advice is straight to the point and he exposes the tricks of the trade giving consumers the enormous benefit of an insider’s view of the industry. Check out his mortgage advice to see what we mean. If his simplistic website had more traction, he’d be dangerous. Even more, if US lenders could market their mortgage products with a “Guttentag seal of approval”, he’d really be rich…and the US mortgage industry would be better balanced between producers and consumers.

The Long Now Foundation provides an important counterpoint to today’s “faster, cheaper” culture of consumption and accelerated obsolescence. They creatively foster responsibility on a wider 10,000 year timescale with some of the most profound thinking happening in the world today. Its board members are people like Esther Dyson (the EuroCatalyst 2002 Intellectual Catalyst keynote), Brian Eno (musician, composer and producer of audio and visual landscapes), Peter Schwartz (cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network) and Stewart Brand among others, all of whom serve as endless sources of ideas and inspiration as EuroCatalyst tries to interpret and apply their monumental theories to the housing finance industry. You can download their monthly seminars about Long-term Thinking here.

O’Reilly Radar. We are referring to Tim O’Reilly, NOT you-know-who. The O’Reilly Radar is the foundation of thinking about Web 2.0, the next generation of the internet (also known as The Grid). It’s the new home of the digerati and technorati and you always want to know what they’re up to. Don’t you?

Milken Institute, an independent economic think tank founded by Michael Milken whose mission is to improve the lives and economic conditions of diverse populations in the US and around the world by helping business and public policy leaders identify and implement innovative ideas for creating broad-based prosperity. We’re all for it. They hold educational roundtables, forums, seminars and conferences and publish research findings and conference outcomes.

Open Society Institute and Soros Foundation Network were founded by none other than George Soros. with the purpose of building a global alliance for open society. There’s some very “heavy stuff” to contemplate when Soros writes, regardless of your own opinion he articulates ideas rarely contemplated and acts with conviction. He has an open invitation to participate in EuroCatalyst events any time, we admire him tremendously – if only we could get time in his schedule! (Toni cherishes a letter from him that she believes was signed personally so do not tell her otherwise!) In the meantime, we’ve been privileged to have Alan Boyce and Karin Lissakers attend and speak at EuroCatalyst, and enjoy spirited dialogues with Alan Boyce on global housing finance (and those of you who know him also know exactly what we mean when we say "spirited"). As a “background research” piece to the upcoming 5 year anniversary of the EuroCatalyst annual event in Madrid this October (EuroCatalyst 2007), we strongly recommend reading the recent Soros essay, "Europe as a Prototype for a Global Open Society". We will test you on it later.

Since 1971 the World Economic Forum has generated an ongoing dialogue and debate on the major social and economic problems around the world. Its supporters believe in the positive impact of the collaborative dialogue at the top of the global food chain, while critics claim it’s nothing more than a business forum where the richest negotiate deals more easily among the world’s most powerful politicians. Regardless, the dialogue is crucial. It is interesting to note that until 2001 the main decision-making boards and board of directors were 100% male! Since 2001 they have made concerted efforts to include the voices that represent the majority constituency of 52% of the world’s population (i.e. women) through their "Women Leaders Program". Apparently the participation of women now exceeds 14%. The costs of membership are high, but much of the research is either free or low-cost! For any firms looking to expand across borders, we highly recommend you read the forum’s flagship publication, the Global Competitiveness Report. For those so inclined, we also recommend their new Global Gender Gap Report 2006 which you can download download here. It’s a start. Not that we resemble that remark . . .