GROWTH THEMES | THEME 1 EDITGENETICS
1. EditGenetics
2. Connected Commerce
3. Digital Reality
4. Conservation Capitalism
5. The Future of Manufacturing
1
GROWTH THEME
EditGenetics
Lengthening and Improving Lives
A trend McKinsey calls “synthetic biology”— which is essentially the merging of science and big data — can be seen across diverse fields, including medicine, biofuels, agriculture, food/nutrition, and even cosmetics.
In medicine, we seem to be at a tipping point, driven by genome sequencing and modularizing pieces of DNA. Research and
development funding has increased significantly since 2015, and we believe commercial breakthroughs are imminent.
Plus, the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) implications are massive, both good (think about renewable resources) and bad (think about the ethics of playing God).

CRISPR is basically doing what we’ve been doing for generations, which is naturally selecting the traits that we see as desirable, and speeding up that process, taking millions of years and condensing it down into very short periods.
Benjamin Loss, CFA
Global Research Analyst

THE GENE THERAPY OPPORTUNITY IN RARE DISEASES
There are 7,136 rare diseases.




Source: William Blair, Redburn, and Evaluate Pharma.
THE GENE THERAPY OPPORTUNITY IN RARE DISEASES
There are 7,136 rare diseases.

Source: William Blair, Redburn, and Evaluate Pharma.
Anticipation and Analysis—
Essential to Active Investing
As active growth investors, we seek to anticipate and analyze possible outcomes in a way other investment approaches cannot.
We are ultimately betting against the very powerful reality of mean reversion. The adage that “the more things change, the more they may stay the same” is powerful, and is often true.
But in reality things do change. Consumer behaviors evolve. Humans innovate and create new solutions. Corporate profit pools shift. And new winners emerge. Just think about some of the things the world was predicting at the turn of the last decade.
And for now, the ability to predict changes is still the domain of humans. It is our job, then, to develop a practice of forecasting, which involves observing, learning, and anticipating the future.
Creating a framework for forecasting helps us decrease the variability around predicted outcomes, improve accuracy, and act on investment ideas earlier and with greater conviction.
William Blair Strategies
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