Joe Mansueto and Morningstar Invest

Joe Mansueto and Morningstar
Investment funds constitute the best opportunity for small investors to invest on the stock market. In the early 1980s, the investment fund industry in the USA grew fairly rapidly. There was no reliable information available concerning the funds and their yields, or it was not available to the man in the street. So the private investor did not have the necessary tools to identify, analyse and compare investment funds. This state of affair actually put a break on the continuing development of the idea behind investment funds.
Joe mansueto, a young, promising, professional economist,believed that this kind of information should be freely available to everybody. He decided that he would try to structure and democratise valid information on investment funds, and established the company Morningstar. The first edition of morningstar’s “the Sourcebook”, published in 1984 and quite affordable for private investors, became a success and soon had benchmark status when it came to benefiting investors as well as fund suppliers and managers. Later on, Morningstar’s set the world standard as the leading, independent brand in rating investment funds. From the outset, the company and investment funds have developed successfully as each other’s companions, and the internet provided the Morningstar’s concept and star rating with strong penetration.
In the case of Morningstar’s, interdependence is manifest, although, the investment industry would probably have existed in any case, even without ratings and free information for all.
Changes in one market can, if they are interpreted thoughtfully and with due diligence, lead to insight into problems that will allow substitution solutions in an entirely different market.
For a long time, the company Dupont, which discovered the material nylon, had been focusing on parachutes. When this market crumbled after World War II leaving Dupont with a sales proble, and when women’s liberation in the USA became more widespread, a perfect substitution opportunity appeared, as nylon was excellently suited to make thin, affordable stockings for a mass market that could not afford silk.
Substitution may look quite coincidental: the insulation material rock-wool that turned out to have excellent properties as pot mould in horticultural enter – prises – a discovery which the Rockwool Company exploited in a very efficient manner. Hydrocolloid bandages, originally intended for ostomy patients, but which coloplast managed to develop into the sports product Compeed; before the development of Compeed there was no quick and safe treatment of blisters and pressure sores without any discomfort.
It is never a simple matter to find your bearings for where and when a certain new occurrence holds a potential for entrepreneurship. The art lies in the way in which information is processed and combined to provide a lead based on insight.