Today in Global Small Business: Shipping Containers in Parking Lots in Doctors' Offices

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• The latest thing in doctors' offices:  shipping containers in parking lots (subscription required).
• Agreement reached at OECD to end export credit support for unabated coal-fired power plants.
• Ensuring a strong recovery for developing countries.
• Quote of the week:  "There is one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent threat of a changing climate." – Barack Obama on Climate Change, 44th President of the United States of America
• Managing water and climate risk with renewable energy.
• Realizing the ROI of future – digital capabilities top of list.

Without Standard Shipping Containers, the Global Supply Chain Would Not Exist

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Anna Nagurney for Fast Company writes, "Today, an estimated 90% of the world’s goods are transported by sea, with 60% of that—including virtually all of your imported fruits, gadgets, and appliances—packed in large steel containers."  She goes on to say, "In short, without the standardized container, the global supply chain that society depends upon—and that I study—would not exist."

In fact, the average size of a container ship has doubled in the past 20 years alone. The largest ships sailing today are capable of hauling 24,000 containers—that’s a carrying capacity equivalent to how much a freight train 44 miles long could hold. Put another way, a ship named the Globe with a capacity of 19,100 20-foot containers could haul 156 million pairs of shoes, 300 million tablet computers, or 900 million cans of baked beans—in case you’re feeling hungry.

Read Anna's full length thought-provoking and thorough article: The $14 trillion reason you should care about the shipping container shortage.

The History of International Trade in Three Distinct 'Globalizations'

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I [Laurel Delaney] wrote about Marc Levinson's book, The Box, in Exporting:  The Definitive Guide to Selling Abroad Profitably.  It was a fascinating book delving deep into who invented the containerized cargo and how it made our world bigger.

Twelve years later, Levinson has come out with a companion volume, Outside the Box.

Ostensibly a history of international trade through three distinct “globalizations,” Outside the Box is most useful as a chronicle of how the pre-2008 model of complex, globe-spanning, just-in-time manufacturing has been exposed as fragile, inefficient, and opaque.

Learn more about journalist and historian Marc Levinson's new book, describing the limits of long supply chains and the ways in which new trade routes are forming.