If ousted Citigroup chairman Vikram Pandit had made the following comments, recorded by Tom Braithwaite in a “Lunch with the Financial Times“ piece, twenty years ago, they would have been bold, forward-thinking statements. Now? Meh. Feels like he’s playing catch-up. An excerpt:

“‘Data is like . . . You’re too young, but there was a movie with the [line about] plastics.’ When I assure him I’m familiar with The Graduate, he says: ‘Data is this generation’s plastics. I don’t see business models being truly successful until you get it.’

Pandit has a fondness for big concepts and management-speak and it can be difficult to bring him down to earth. I press him for examples. ‘You have large auto companies saying, ‘Where is the growth?’ and, on the other hand, you have a SMAC stack that’s created Uber. What’s interesting is that all those intangible abilities are inside the auto companies to make it happen.’

He has been investing in a steady stream of companies that he thinks embody innovative ideas that might make them the next Uber, the suddenly ubiquitous taxi-ordering app. At the same time, he is chairman of TGG Group, a consulting company set up by Steven Levitt, co-author of pop economics book Freakonomics – which aims to help corporations unlock their inner Ubers.

Starters cleared away, Pandit isolates a small breadcrumb in the expanse of white tablecloth and tweezers it between his finger nails. Behavioural economics, he says, provides an ‘uncanny ability to predict how you’re going to behave.’ Levitt, best-known for a book which explores the business model of drug-dealers and cheating sumo wrestlers, is applying his analysis of human behaviour to companies in ways that ‘will be in textbooks in 10 years.'”