Information is everywhere, Insight is power
About Richard Murff
Richard Murff is a research analyst and strategic adviser working across markets, technology, geopolitics and communications. His career has moved through advertising, capital markets, banking, technology, NGOs and foreign affairs — including on-the-ground work in the Middle East and other places where the geopolitical situation was considerably less theoretical.
It’s a good thing too. Markets don't exist separately from politics. Technology doesn't exist separately from capital. And neither exists separately from human behavior. 4717 was built to connect those dots.
Murff's work focuses on taking complicated information, finding the useful pattern inside it and explaining what it means in practical terms. Sometimes that requires a spreadsheet. Sometimes it requires a map. Occasionally it requires asking a question that makes everyone uncomfortable.
Usually, it helps.
Pothole of the Gods:
Holy War, Proxy War & Bad Ideas
Updated & Revised
Richard Murff embarks on a strangely comic journey through Iraq, Istanbul, Benghazi, and the long history of humanity's most enduring bad ideas.
Murff hits dusty checkpoints, hospitals and cafés for conversations with people living with the somebody else's grand strategy - threading ancient empires, holy wars, proxy conflicts, revolutions, and information warfare into one surprisingly coherent story about power, belief, and unintended consequences.
Equal parts travel narrative, history lesson, and geopolitical detective story, Pothole of the Gods argues that today's market shocks start with dangerous assumptions about history, ideology, and human nature.
More than a journey through conflict zones, this is a witty field guide to bad ideas - because sooner or later, history always sends the bill.
Media & Speaking
Geopolitics | Markets | Strategic Miscalculation | Communication
Why Murff? Why This Conversation?
Richard Murff founded 4717, a strategic advisory firm helping executives understand how geopolitics shapes markets, strategy, and risk. His work combines research, on-the-ground assessment, and a writer's instinct for finding the story inside the data. Geopolitical crises eventually become somebody's balance-sheet problem — but the first failure is often one of assumptions.
His updated and revised edition of Pothole of the Gods: Holy Wars, Proxy Wars & Bad Ideas is a darkly comic journey through the history, markets and the peculiar tendency of intelligent people to make very poor decisions.
Murff is a former advertising executive and investment banker. He has conducted on-the-ground assessments in Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Ecuador, and Nicaragua and writes The Murff Papers on the intersection of geopolitics, markets, and the surprisingly long shelf life of bad ideas.
Available for: Podcasts | Interviews | Panels | Speaking Engagements
On the web...
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In a world of consensus thinking, Richard Murff has gained a reputation for being, well, weird. Certainly for asking weird questions.
Yet there is method to it. If you know what has happened, you have information, if you know why, you have leverage.