FCLTGlobal, a not-for-profit organization that encourages long-term behaviors in business and investment, has found that long-term-oriented investors deliver superior performance, and long-term-oriented companies outperform in terms of revenue, earnings, and job creation. A McKinsey & Company study found that the revenue of firms with a long-term mindset cumulatively grew on average 47% more than other firms, and their earnings grew 36% more.

There is a danger, however, in sharing these business examples. It's easy to blame business short-termism on our financial system, with its emphasis on quarterly earnings, stock prices, etc. But the truth is that short-termism is a bias deeply rooted within humans generally.

I recently chatted with Nobel Prize winner Dr. Michael Houghton, a virologist in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and director of the Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute at the University of Alberta. Dr. Houghton won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the hepatitis C (HCV) virus, and he shared, "While we've made a lot of progress in containing the hepatitis C pandemic, unfortunately, because of opioid use around the world, the number of hepatitis C cases is actually growing in some countries."

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