There is a kind of knowledge that only time can produce. Not information - information is abundant and cheap. Not theory - theory can be learned in a weekend. The kind of knowledge that Rajesh Bothra is talking about is something different: the deep, embodied understanding of how markets move, how people behave under pressure, how trust is built and destroyed, and how the decisions that seem small in the moment turn out to be the ones that matter most. That knowledge takes decades. And it cannot be acquired any other way.

The Singapore-based entrepreneur and global business figure has spent three decades accumulating exactly this kind of knowledge - across multiple markets, through multiple cycles, alongside thousands of interactions with people at every level of the business world. What he has to say about what that experience has taught him is, by his own admission, not what most people expect.