“America's future—and the future of the world beyond America—depends on how well we deal with” four issues, they argue ... globalization ...Read more here. And Thomas Friedman is quoted.
EndoStim was inspired by Cuban and Indian immigrants to America and funded by St. Louis venture capitalists. Its prototype is being manufactured in Uruguay, with the help of Israeli engineers and constant feedback from doctors in India and Chile. Oh, and the C.E.O. is a South African, who was educated at the Sorbonne, but lives in Missouri and California, and his head office is basically a BlackBerry. While rescuing General Motors will save some old jobs, only by spawning thousands of EndoStims — thousands — will we generate the kind of good new jobs to keep raising our standard of living.Read the entire contribution here:
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There's certainly no good reason why you can't do this same project across borders. An excerpt from Thomas L. Friedman's Op-Ed column in The New York Times (12/12/09):Two examples, one small, one large: The first is my childhood friend, Ken Greer, who owns a marketing agency in Minneapolis, Greer & Associates. The Great Recession has forced him to radically downsize, but the Great Inflection has made him radically more productive. He illustrated this by telling me about a film he recently made for a nonprofit.Read the entire column here. When you attempt to access cheap tools and focus on your value add, take it global.“The budget was about 20 percent of what we normally would charge,” said Greer. “After one meeting with the client, almost all our communication was by e-mail. The script was developed and approved using a collaborative tool provided by www.box.net. Internally, we all could look at the script no matter where we were, make suggestions and get to a final draft with complete transparency — easy, convenient and free. We did not have a budget to shoot new footage, yet we had no budget either for stock photography the old way — paying royalties of $100 to $2,000 per image. We found a source, istockphoto.com, which offered great photos for as little as a few dollars.
“We could easily preview all the images, place them in our program to make sure they worked, purchase them online and download the high-resolution versions — all in seconds,” Greer added. “We had a script that called for 4 to 5 voices. Rather than hiring local voice talent — for $250 to $500 per hour — we searched the Internet for high-quality voices that we could afford. We found several sites offering various forms of narration or voice-overs. We selected www.voices.com. In less than one minute, we created an account, posted our requirements and solicited bids. Within five minutes, we had 10 to 15 ‘applicants’ ” — charging 10 percent of what Greer would have paid live talent.
“Best part,” he said, “within minutes we had sample reads, which could be placed into our film to see if the voices fit. We selected our finalists, wrote them with more specific instructions and within hours had the final read delivered to us via MP3 files over the Web. We could get any accent or ethnicity we wanted. For music, we used a site called www.audiojungle.net,” where he could sample thousands of cuts of music and sound effects with the click of a mouse, and then buy them for pennies.
By being able to access all these cheap tools, Greer got to focus on his value-add: imagination.
Technology and globalization“If we’re going to get our economy working again, we have to pay attention on how to get people and small businesses to perform and prosper ... I think you are vital to the restoration of growth in our economy ... It is innovation and entrepreneurship that will lead us out of this economic crisis. Not big government, not big business, not big labor.”Way back when in his "The World Is Flat" book, Thomas Friedman wrote about how technology and globalization have changed our lives forever.
Last night I read an interesting article by Richard Skinner in the Trusteeship Magazine published by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Its title is It IS a Small World After All: Globalization of Higher Education (Page 8 in offline copy only) and it is about what role should governing boards play in overseeing international education.Globalization may well have, as Thomas Friedman asserts, flattened the world. ATMs make cash available on every continent. KFC is a universally recognized brand. Rap music is heard everywhere. Still, cultural differences persist; indeed, without them there would be little point in promoting internatinal engagement as multicultural experience.Worth a read.
A fascinating post by one of my favorite minds: Thomas Friedman. It's a little off course to our work here but once in a while you just to have go with it -- provided it's that good. And it is.
Listen (or read all about) a new -- thanks to UPS -- customs clearance and international returns solutions for small businesses.Gardner: Let’s start with Laurel. Help us understand some of the issues facing small businesses, those seeking to expand their addressable markets and how they can start doing more business overseas.Visit here if you want to listen to the podcast or read the transcript. Go here if you want to simplify international trade.
Delaney: Actually, there are two forces at work right now for small businesses. One has to do with the issue of globalization. I think we all know the buzz that’s going on about going global that has been driven largely by Thomas Friedman with his book, "The World is Flat." He’s caused mainstream America and all small businesses to step up to the plate and consider the world as your market. The second force is technology, and technology is making it easier now to go global.
Business Strategies Magazine conducts an interview with Thomas J. Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of "The World Is Flat."
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