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Ross Rant: Canada, Indonesia, Fortune 50

Canada votes: Canadians go to the polls today to vote in a general election which pollsters suggest will result in a hung parliament and possibly a new party in power.

Turnout has already broken the record for early voting in a Canadian federal election: some 4.7 million citizens (out of an electorate of about 26 million) cast their ballots last week.

The governing Liberals, led by PM Justin Trudeau, look likely to win roughly as many seats as the opposition Conservatives, under Andrew Scheer. If neither the Liberals or Conservatives get a majority, then either would need support from smaller parties to govern.

We could see the Conservatives win the popular vote by one or two percentage points and talk of the "Trump Factor" but not be able to form a government and the Liberals forming the government.

The centrist Liberals would look to the left-leaning New Democratic Party, whose leader and campaign trail superstar, Jagmeet Singh, has ruled out supporting the right-leaning Conservatives. The Liberals and New Democratic Party share some common ground on climate change, immigration, and the need for a single-payer drug system.

The Conservatives meanwhile might turn to the separatist Bloc Québécois, which has sometimes backed them in the past. But the Bloc’s leader, Yves-François Blanchet, dislikes the Conservatives’ lack of seriousness on climate change and says his party will divvy out its support, issue by issue.

In 2015 the Liberals won convincingly; expect a cliff-hanger tonight as PM Justin Trudeau has been dogged by failing to be a progressive all-star over his handling of an oil pipeline to the US and diversity issues in his youth.

Preliminary results should be announced around 8:00 pm ET.

What next for Indonesia? Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo back on the job after the inauguration of his second term in Jakarta yesterday.

In recent weeks, street violence has taken some of the shine off his re-election in May. Student demonstrators, prompted by the introduction of several controversial laws rushed through by the outgoing parliament, clashed with police in bloody scenes repeated across the world’s largest Muslim country.

Going forward, look for Widodo to prioritize education and foreign direct investment during his final term, starting with an injection of youth into his cabinet (reported to include the founder of the Indonesian Uber-style unicorn Go-Jek).

However, kickstarting the country’s sputtering economy faces plenty of obstacles. Chief among them is unrest in Papua and a parliament intent on ending direct presidential elections to stop another political outsider rising to the top in 2024.

Fortune 50: This morning Fortune released its third annual Future 50 list. Developed with Martin Reeves of the BCG Henderson Institute, the list is not based on measures of past performance but rather attempts to measure commitment to the future. Half of it is based on the market’s assessment of a company’s future potential beyond the existing stream of profits; the other half reflects a sophisticated assessment, using natural language processing among other tools, of strategy, technology, people and structure.

The research at the BCG Henderson Institute has shown that even in economic downturns, revenue growth (not cutting costs) is the primary driver of total shareholder returns. Further, even the best-performing companies are increasingly likely to regress to the mean in sales growth given today’s business climate—so they need to continually renew their advantage if they wish to outperform.

In other words, it is more important than ever for companies to have vitality—the capacity to reinvent their businesses and sustain long-term growth.

Here's the top 10:

Workday
Square
ServiceNow
Contemporary Amperex Technology
Spotify
Atlassian
Xiaomi
Ctrip.com
Salesforce
Vertex Pharmaceuticals

Explore the full list here: http://bit.ly/2o4T36Z

-Marc

Marc A. Ross is a globalization strategist and communications advisor working at the intersection of globalization, disruption, and politics. Ross specializes in helping global business leaders make better connections and better communications. He is the founder of Caracal Communications.