Tag: culture

Latest read: Planet India

India is the second fastest growing economy in the world, second only to their Asian neighbor China. Both have embraced globalization yet are racing to secure resources as their economies, populations, markets and environments grow out of control. India has the second largest population with almost 1.5 billion citizens.

My understanding of India’s impact on the global market continues to grow after reading Planet India: How the Fastest Growing Democracy Is Transforming America and the World. Mira Kamdar’s has hilighted both positive and negative (poverty, piracy and global warming) developments in India.

I’m very impressed by India’s innovation in creating the world’s next motion picture industry. Bollywood will not compete with Hollywood in America, it will simply run it over as India’s youth overtakes America. Remember their population is growing and has acquired new-found wealth as a result of globalization. It is a safe bet their children will be interested in watching movies like American teenagers.

Tags china, culture, economy, environment, Globalization, india, Infosys, Mira Kamdar, offshoring, outsourcing, Planet India, Technology, trends, white collar, wipro

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Latest read: The Wisdom of Crowds

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date April 9, 2008

James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds proves useful in understanding the impact (both positive and negative) regarding knowledge of isolated individuals vs. collective intelligence that shapes business, economies, societies and nations.

Surowiecki opens the book with a great example of the surprising “wisdom” possessed by groups of people. The book is a easy, enjoyable read.

As much as I enjoyed the learning I was somewhat more interested in learning the faults of crowds…specifically his analysis of NASA and the Columbia tragedy. To some extent the exact same lessons can be lifted from NASA and applied to Watergate, the highly intelligent crowd in the White House of Nixon’s inner circle.

The NASA “crowd” knew the danger yet did not as a group act to save the lives of their astronauts. In this lesson, I’m not convinced of the blanket approach to the wisdom of crowds. But Surowiecki is able to relay a number of cases in which this applies in business and societies.

The ability of crowds to outsmart a individual experts on any given topic ultimately supports the strength of communities, but as noted above even groups of specialists with graduate degrees have the ability to ignore their collective wisdom.

Tags community, consumer, crowd, culture, group, group think, knowledge, nasa, suroweicki, The Wisdom of Crowds, trends, wisdom

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Latest read: The Paradox of Choice

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date March 17, 2008
1 Comment on Latest read: The Paradox of Choice

I watched a TED video of Barry Schwartz and was interested to learn more about his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less and learn the downside (and unhappiness) of abundance. Have you noticed as of late that almost everything is available…in too many overwhelming choices?

As Schwartz points out consider the types of choice in your local grocery store: 285 cookie options, 85 types of crackers, 95 types of chips, 75 iced teas, 29 chicken soups, 175 salad dressings and 275 boxes of cereal. Welcome to The Paradox of Choice. Try shopping for a new pair of jeans as he described in his TED presentation and the introduction to this book.

In my childhood things seemed simple. There were just three television channels…plus a PBS station. When the new school started I would receive two or three pairs of stiff denim jeans. Every kid in my school would wear the same dark blue demin and would not feel comfortable until the third week of school. By then our clothes were finally broken in via the wash cycle.

Don’t consider this book the opposite of Chris Anderson‘s The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. It would be more accurate to describe the book as what happens to individuals overwhelmed by choice.

Tags consumer, culture, spending, TED, The Paradox of Choice, trends

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Latest read: How We Compete

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date November 21, 2007

Suzanne Berger and MIT’s Industrial Performance Center wrote a book after concluding a five year study of the new global economy How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make it in Today’s Global Economy.

how we compete

If you want to learn more about globalization, this is a necessary addition to your bookshelf. Today companies must compete.

The study moves beyond the often discussed Dell approach to manufacturing. Lessons from auto and textile industries are included and should not be missed. How America can compete against the global marketplace?

Students entering the real world after school makes this book mandatory reading before graduating … from high school. By the time your set to graduate from college — it may be too late.

Companies that need to compete are shifting production … sometimes to very interesting locations for very interesting business reasons. Understanding this process and the major impacts of globalization will help us all prepare for tomorrow’s shifting economic climate. There are powerful lessons from many industries that have shifted into a highly competitive marketplace with a global reach. In doing so, these companies now compete with global brands.

Globalization can be very complicated. This book suggests very intriguing lessons from companies who need to compete are outsourcing their products, production lines or selected low end solution simply to survive against the competition.

We have a lot to learn from the Japanese and the Italians!

Tags america, business, change, china, culture, economy, Education, future, Globalization, india, Innovation, knowledge, MIT, offshoring, outsourcing, Technology, trends

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Latest read: The Tipping Point

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date August 18, 2007
3 Comments on Latest read: The Tipping Point

A long and exciting summer with Maxwell has taken me away from my daily reading. But I have just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and learned its just as great as reviews have suggested.
Chapter 3 (The Stickiness Factor: Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues and the Educational Virus) is a really great read and made a real impact in approaching a thread that is currently underway on Internet2‘s Teaching and Learning listserv.

The discussion is about the impact of SecondLife in K12 education. There are real questions about the validity of SecondLife.

After the initial hype of SecondLife (for higher education) peaked, colleges now find themselves in the same rut about really embracing SecondLife when virtual visits never really materialized. A lost leader? Probably.

Many including Wired‘s Chris Anderson are openly debating the ‘stickiness’ of SecondLife. Does it provide solid learning outside the classroom or studio?

Tags Blue's Clues, chris anderson, culture, educational content, Internet2, learning, malcolm gladwell, SecondLife, Sesame Street, the tipping point, trends