Tuesday, August 30, 2005

China's hidden weaknesses

In The American Thinker

This is a great commentary offering good insights and I will follow up with the author, Brian Schwar, who lives in China, to get more of his thoughts on doing business in China. Here's his lead ...

"Before Westerners get carried away with irrational exuberance about the number of new Shanghai skyscrapers going up or the millions of new cars clogging the streets of Beijing, foreigners would do well to gain a greater understanding of the massive economic challenges its Communist leaders need to tackle in the next few years."

To read the entire feature, visit here.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Getting To Global

In ManyWorlds.com

One of my favorite minds in strategic marketing, e-business and innovation is that of Mohan Sawhney, who is the McCormick Tribune Professor of Technology, the Chairperson of the Technology Industry Management Program, and the Director of the Center for Research in Technology and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) -- not too far from where my office is located.

He writes a briefing which states, "Getting to global in a fuller sense means passing through four stages: global sales, global sourcing, global processes, and the differentiated global network."

Friday, August 19, 2005

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy

New book ...

During a 1999 protest of the World Trade Organization, Rivoli, an economics professor at Georgetown, looked on as an activist seized the microphone and demanded, "Who made your T-shirt?" Rivoli determined to find out. She interviewed cotton farmers in Texas, factory workers in China, labor champions in the American South and used-clothing vendors in Tanzania. Problems, Rivoli concludes, arise not with the market, but with the suppression of the market. Subsidized farmers, and manufacturers and importers with tax breaks, she argues, succeed because they avoid the risks and competition of unprotected global trade, which in turn forces poorer countries to lower their prices to below subsistence levels in order to compete. Rivoli seems surprised by her own conclusions, and while some chapters lapse into academic prose and tedious descriptions of bureaucratic maneuvering, her writing is at its best when it considers the social dimensions of a global economy, as in chapters on the social networks of African used-clothing entrepreneurs.

Source: ICEVED

Friday, August 12, 2005

A Real Chinese Entrepreneur

In Forbes

HANGZHOU, CHINA -- Chinese entrepreneur Richard Wang is one of only a handful of businesspeople in this country to know firsthand what it's like to try to acquire businesses located in the United States.

Four years ago, his Holley Group bought a mobile phone chip-design business with operations in San Jose, Calif., Dallas and Vancouver, British Columbia, from Dutch electronics firm Philips. The business has been downsized and consolidated in Canada, but Wang considers himself successful because he obtained key CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology.

Read the balance of article here.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Laurel's new ebook is ready: GODZILLA Global Marketing!

Get ready. Get set. Get going. Get GODZILLA global.


I make growing global so easy you won't want to miss this and it only costs U.S. $8.95 -- "GODZILLA Global Marketing!"

Or, forget the intro and just buy it now.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

From outsourcing to worldsourcing

In International Trade Forum

“Worldsourcing” — global outsourcing — is benefiting a number of developing and transition economies. It is also fundamentally changing the structure of firms.

Some developing and transition economies have recorded local improvements in living standards by supplying the industrial world with products and services that are no longer profitable in high-cost labour economies. Current trends are for firms in industrial countries to move from outsourcing to “offshoring”, even to “worldsourcing."