Tag: borderless world

Categories
Cyberinfrastructure Education Flat World Globalization Innovation Network Reading Technology

Latest read: Corporate Agility

How do organizations compete today?  Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World provides a good reference on how major US companies have adopted a new business model for competing in a flat world.

corporate agilityAfter reading Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century book series on globalization and the breakthrough work by Jerry Wind and Victor & William Fung in Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World.

I found chapters in Corporate Agility a fit perfectly to the above works.  Corporate Agility supports business case studies throughout the book that span a wide range of industries with lessons for all who are seeking new models for business in the 21st globalized century.

The strongest chapter is early in the book surrounding the shift in company buildings and the move to a mobile workforce that permits companies to break expensive building leases and create smaller ‘offices’ with limited administrative staff and resources.

I have experienced these efforts directly in working with clients who have been forced to trim staff and yet end up in an dry office complex with over 50% of their office cubes empty.

Actually I’m reminded of a PR company who hired temporary workers to “work” in all their empty cubes while a potential client made an office visit.  Needless to say they did not understand the basics of a company’s need for agility as described in the book.

I feel the early chapters of Corporate Agility is an expansion of The World Is Flat while the book’s case studies just touch the surface that is presented in detail by Competing in a Flat World.

Corporate Agility’s book website

Categories
Design Education Flat World Globalization Google Innovation Reading

Latest read: Ahead of the Curve

The title of Philip Delves Broughton‘s Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School was interesting enough to jump on my reading list but when I began to see his book mentioned in blogs and on twitter I pulled it from my wish list and dropped it into my cart.  It was not a mistake. The opportunity to learn about the life of a Harvard MBA candidate is a pretty interesting read.

Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business SchoolBroughton is the former Paris bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph of London. His writing was easy, flowing and pleasant.  Broughton was also very human in his approach to writing about the elite training ground for the high stress world of finance, venture capital and banking.

Broughton was also able to describe those MBA alums who spoke of those demands and losing wives and children to the long hours of business.  It was a bit odd to read that more than a few alums went through the divorce process four times.

Worse yet was those few who admitted their own children did not know who they were due to those demanding hours.  Most wanted their MBA to provide for their family while in fact they were losing touch with them in the process…all for the glory of wealth and fame.

And yes it was interesting to hear how his class of 2006 could land $400,000 jobs, his thirteen interviews with Google were pretty demanding.

In the end he skipped his graduation on a rainy Saturday in to take his infant son to his favorite Boston spot for cannoli.  At one point in my life I would have ridiculed this man for skipping his Harvard commencement.  For $175,000 (minus his new BMW — see below) you better be sure I would show up come rain or snow for that moment.  Today with two small children and a backdrop of a soggy event on Harvard Square I kinda understood his decision.

I was impressed with his review of their first year known as RC: required cirriculum.  The demands of Harvard’s case studies was rather impressive as their main tool for teaching.  And from the looks of it those case studies required round the clock research and planning.  The feel of his fellow students all aiming for post Harvard success was an interesting read, especially from the foreign students.  Most of his fellow students agreed they did not want to be called upon to review a case study.  The demands were extremely high and Broughton described a couple of painful episodes of his participation and those by his fellow students.

Continue reading “Latest read: Ahead of the Curve”
Categories
Design Education Globalization Google Innovation Milwaukee Network OLPC OpenSource Reading Rich media Smartphone Technology

Latest read: Who Controls the Internet?

Think the internet is still the wild west?  Think again.  In a new update of Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World law professors Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu share how the long arm of foreign governments still can stretch the illusion that the internet (and thereby globalization) are shrinking the world.

On the surface you may believe — even in 2009 that you can still say anything, do anything or hack any computer around the globe without impunity because you can hide inside the internet.

Goldsmith and Wu challenge Tom Friedman’s (The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century) position that globalization is opening up communication in countries that have long suppressed their citizen’s ability to speak freely.

China for example. Or think about the European Union.  Is the EU able to dictate how Microsoft releases software?  Think again.  When Microsoft published it’s passport technology it was rejected by the EU.  Rather than pay a fine Microsoft added the tougher security standards dictated by the EU for all customers worldwide.  Those standards are even tougher than those used in America.

Can France tell Yahoo or eBay what products to sell?  They can and they already do.  This book is written from a legal standpoint since both teach at the Law Schools of Harvard and Columbia respectively. Is it strange to see government control over the internet?  Would this be different if today was September 10 2001?  Goldsmith and Wu share their insight to the way Law helps and hinders the internet.  From simply selling memorabilia to cybercrime you learn gaping holes exist even today to prosecute offenders and criminals.

The “I Love You” virus that cost US companies millions of dollars originated in The Philippines, but since there is no law against this type of crime in the The Philippines the US was unable to arrest the known hacker.  Similar rules apply in Russia. When the FBI arrested a hacker who extorted millions from US companies, Russia did not acknowledge this type of crime and did not agree to extradite, so the FBI was forced to release the criminal.

Goldsmith and Wu share the legal case between Yahoo and the country of France that forced Yahoo’s online store to pull Nazi related memorabilia even though Yahoo is an American based company.  But Yahoo’s remote offices in France proved to the key error Jerry Yang overlooked.  Yahoo has stumbled a lot lately.

Continue reading “Latest read: Who Controls the Internet?”