day 36

beach blanket babylon 3: rock concert for capitalists

My $225 registration fee was rewarded by John Naisbitt and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Maybe they lacked the humor of politicians and entertainers, but they had actually thought about some important issues. Take Naisbitt's shocking revelations about the 21st century. According to Naisbitt, Asia is already driving the global economy. And, Asia is being driven by 57 million ethnic Chinese who live abroad, but still maintain family ties in China. This "Mafia" controls 80% of foreign investment in mainland China. They alone are the 3rd largest economy in the world! They make Japan look like Ireland. This is the force that will shape the next century, the Asian Century. Here is Naisbitt's lessons for the future. First, Asian governments have stepped aside and given entrepreneurs more leniency than we have in the USA. Thousands of USA-educated and SV trained engineers are returning to Asia to compete with SV. This bodes ill for SV. Second, Asia has surpassed the West in sophistication, education, and ethnic diversity. They have the best hotels, highest buildings, most efficient and safest airlines, highest savings rate, and most flexible government structures. This bodes ill for Americans. Third, they are Easternizing the West, rather than the reverse. Gordon Wu recently gave $100 million to Princeton University. Much of the western economy is controlled by the Chinese Mafia, via Wall Street. Money will speak even louder in the 21st century. This bodes ill for the West. Couple Naisbitt's statistics with Kanter's main theme, and you have the outlines of a new world. "What makes the world go 'round is the desire to go shopping," says Kanter. As countries develop, their population graduates from buying food in restaurants, to buying clothes, then appliances, then cars, and finally, to taking vacations. Travel-related industries are 20% of the USA economy, for example. With 1.2 billion potential consumers, China will determine the products, not the West. The profile of the future computer user will be shaped by people who currently do not even drive cars. A market-driven company can gauge where a market is in the hierarchy by comparing this hierarchy with the current state of the consumer in a given country. When the appliance wave passes, the car wave is just around the corner. China is building lots of restaurants. Looking like the Quaker Oaks pilgrim, but moving and speaking like Bette Midler, Rosabeth belted out this idea: FutureBusinesses must develop the 3 C's: concepts (brain power), competence (ability to execute), and connections (leverage and partner). The problem for the West is that Asians are doing these better than anyone else, although software development is (temporarily) dominated by Americans. There is more.

beach blanket babylon: 1 2 Daily Dose Index