Tag: Education

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Latest read: How We Compete

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!

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Education Globalization Network Reading Technology

Latest read: Three billion new capitalists

Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by Clyde Prestowitz is a good companion to Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat regarding globalization. At times I felt the chapters could have been written by both authors. Ultimately they complement the globalization story.

Prestowitz was counselor to the Secretary of Commerce during the Reagan Administration and is Founder and President of the Economic Strategy Institute, a thinktank in Washington DC.

Globalization is certainly not new and some issues addressed by Prestowitz may be hard to wrap around completely, but he provides an overview of what has been accelerating … offshoring. To no surprise the destination is China and India. Released in 2005 Prestowitz could not have considered the Mattel lead paint product recalls fiasco just two months old as consequences of globalization. Or was that just bad management on Mattel’s part?

The shift in wealth and power also focuses on banking and oil. Two chapters focus on this impact for China and India … and America along with the EU. What is an example of the impact on America: 100,000+ new cars are registered every month in Bejing? I would like to see the numbers for Bangalore. Think of a billion new drivers wanting to see their country, visit family and travel to see friends.

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Education Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest read: Made to Stick

What book would be a perfect follow up to The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell? To prove timing is everything I read Dan and Chip Heath’s new release: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The book’s authors acknowledge that their book complements Gladwell’s The Tipping Point by identifying “traits” necessary to make your ideas ‘sticky’ with your intended audience.
Made to StickWritten by brothers Chip and Dan Heath they share experiences and research in finding ideas that stick. Chip is professor of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Dan is a consultant to Duke University’s Corporate Education program.

Made to Stick provides wonderful insight to learn how powerful ideas succeed in the face of big obstacles (and people) especially in a stale environment. Take Subway’s series of commercials featuring Jared for example.

Originally passed by PR firms, Jared’s story was brought to life by the Subway store manager where Jared ate while attending Indiana University. The ad campaign was eventually created pro-bono by a firm thinking they would fail. Even Subway’s PR firm did not support this idea. Chip and Dan prove not only how wrong they were, but how powerful the idea has turned out to be for Subway.

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Latest read: The Looming Tower

Lawrence Wright has written an amazing book that helps us understand al-Qaeda. His book The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11 is very well written and as a result very upsetting.  This deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize.
The Looming TowerWould you be surprised to learn foundations of al-Qaeda began from an Egyptian enrolled in grad school at the University of Northern Colorado in 1949? His name was Sayyid Qutb. He began the modern Islamist movement that today is al-Qaeda.

Wright documents the wealth of the bin Laden’s family which provided Osama bin Laden the financial ability to forward his own view of the world through terrorism. Osama bin Laden promoted great myths of Islam defeating massive Soviet troops in Afghanistan to sell his vision…including the dreams of airplanes hitting buildings and his relationship with Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The Looming Tower uncovers frustrating examples of how the US government failed to stop the attacks on 9/11 even when small teams within our intelligence agencies had evidence of the coming attacks. But they were fighting each other. The CIA purposefully withheld evidence from the FBI. This shows how broken our intelligence systems were organized and how they failed America.

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Education Globalization Milwaukee Reading Technology

Latest read: The Wal-mart Effect

X+Y does NOT equal Z.  Students enter high school thinking X of the world. In college they should better be exposed to Y because by the time they graduate, the real world will be Z. And there is nothing worse than having a student enter the competitive global world two steps behind.

the walmart effectCharles Fishman’s The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works–and How It’s Transforming the American Economy is simply a must read for every parent, student, faculty member and career counselor in America.

Fishman has done a great job of getting a lot of success stories and failures. So how does this lesson hit home? In Milwaukee the role of Master Lock could not have been more eye-opening. Its a great example of Globalization hitting any city in our country, and the company, city and its employees not ready to deal with the impact of Walmart’s demands. Master Lock was well known for making a good, solid product that sold well for over 75 years.

But by the early 1990s Master Lock was dismantled by Globalization and Walmart. And after Master Lock opened factories in Mexico and China to meet the demands of promising/competing with/against Walmart, the company’s Milwaukee workers lost their jobs. Fishman points out Master Lock employees in Milwaukee who shopped at Walmart inevitably shopped (outsourced) their own jobs out to Mexico and China. Master Lock is just one of many companies in Fishman’s book that showed how eager the likes of Levi Strauss, Vlasic Pickles and Huffy Bicycles were willing to throw themselves at the Walmart bus. As a result of poor business planning they were simply run over by that bus too. All filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Does it really come as any surprise today on the global stage, little mom and pop companies also are shutting down. One former owner continues to shop at Walmart after their company was forced to close its doors basically over a nickle in pricing with Walmart. We know its the biggest corporation in the country, (its the largest employer in the state of Wisconsin) yet produces nothing at all. So just how big is the effect of Walmart? As of Fall 2005:

3,811 Walmart stores in the US (1 store for every 78,000 Americans)
53% of the US population live with 5 miles of a Walmart
90% of the US population live within 15 miles of a Walmart
97% of the US population live with 25 miles of a Walmart
16% of national grocery market is at Walmart

If you think about over saturation in the United States, well….California has only 191 stores. The impact of Walmart is huge important for education. The opening chapter relating to package design is a must read for every designer. Walmart’s demands to reduce packing has changed an industry. And if you want your client’s products to sell at Walmart, they better meet the Walmart’s rules, or else your client will hire another designer to make them fit. Period.

And I’m afraid while many will oppose the growth of Walmart in America, their focus is furthering new growth in China, India and Russia. Just as “democracy” has reached all 3 billion of them.