Coke Bringing The Like Button Into The Real World

July 29, 2011

Coke Bringing The Like Button Into The Real World

Posted by Manoj | Filed Under Manoj Sharma | Leave a Comment

Social Media Revolution 2011

July 28, 2011

Social Media Revolution 2011

Posted by Manoj | Filed Under Manoj Sharma | Leave a Comment

Global Trends 2025 – A Transformed World

July 27, 2011

Global Trends 2025 – A Transformed World

Truly well worth a careful read!

http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf

Posted by Manoj | Filed Under Manoj Sharma | Leave a Comment

Global Forces – A Summary Based On McKinsey

July 27, 2011

Global Forces – A Summary Based On McKinsey

June 2010

The great rebalancing

As the center of economic growth shifts from developed to developing countries, global companies should focus on innovation to win in low-cost, high-growth countries. Their survival elsewhere may depend on it.

The vibrancy of emerging-market growth will not be the only major disruption reshaping the global economy in the next ten years, but it may prove the most profound. This decade will mark the tipping point in a fundamental long-term economic rebalancing that will likely leave traditional Western economies with a lower share of global GDP in 2050 than they had in 1700.

Declining dependency ratios. Virtually all major emerging markets are undergoing demographic shifts that historically have unleashed dynamic economic change: simultaneous labor force growth and rapidly declining birthrates. Simply put, there will be more workers, with fewer mouths to feed, leaving more disposable income.

The largest urban migration in history. Each week, nearly one-and-a-half-million people move to cities, almost all in developing markets. The economic impact: dramatic gains in output per worker as people move off subsistence farms and into urban jobs. China and India are seeing labor productivity grow at more than five times the rate of most Western countries as traditionally agrarian economies become manufacturing and service powerhouses.

Consider that more than 70 million people are crossing the threshold to the middle class each year, virtually all in emerging economies. By the end of the decade, roughly 40 percent of the world’s population will have achieved middle-class status by global standards, up from less than 20 percent today. This means opportunity in consumer markets: P&G, for example, hopes to add a billion new customers to its ranks in the next decade, adding to the nearly four billion the company touches today. In recent quarterly earnings reports, nearly every global consumer products company—from Kraft to Nestlé—noted upticks in profits, driven primarily by unexpected gains in emerging markets.

Don’t assume that emerging markets are just a cost play—technological innovation will be the next frontier

Today, India supplies more technology workers than any other country, and China is on track to pass the United States as the home of the world’s largest R&D workforce. As more and more talent centers spring up across emerging markets and skills deepen, new innovation ecosystems will emerge. Already, more than 1,000 multinational companies operate R&D facilities in China, five times the level a decade ago.

The prospect of this innovation wave unleashed by the great rebalancing should serve as a wake-up call to any CEO. Emerging markets are more than enormous growth opportunities; they are where tomorrow’s champions will hone their long-term competitiveness. Pursuing incremental product line extensions in developed markets, though profitable in the short run, will not suffice to build the critical muscle required. Innovation “blowback” is coming as lower-priced, high-quality products created for the mass markets of tomorrow move from the developing to the developed world.

The productivity imperative

To sustain wealth creation, developed nations must find ways to boost productivity; product and process innovation will be key.

Emerging markets are riding a virtuous growth cycle, propelled by larger and younger working populations. In the wealthy nations of the developed world, by contrast, low birthrates and graying workforces will make it enormously difficult to maintain what economist Adam Smith called “the natural progress of opulence.”

These countries’ best hope for keeping the wealth creation engine stoked is improved productivity—producing more with fewer workers. Paradoxically, doing that well across an economy is also the only way to generate lasting employment gains. In the United States, for example, every point of productivity-led GDP growth has historically generated an incremental 750,000 follow-on jobs.

The productivity economy will reward ‘do it smarter’ companies that build a better business model

Besides providing powerful incentives for companies to deliver their traditional products and services more efficiently, the new environment may make selling productivity—finding marketable ways to “do it smarter”—the most transformative business model of the next decade.

The best companies will learn how to maximize returns from people who think for a living

Just as the early 20th century saw the development of management theory for improving the productivity of factory workers, the 21st century will see the evolution of myriad better techniques for managing people who think for a living.

The potential stakes are enormous. Companies that have higher concentrations of knowledge workers (above 35 percent of the workforce) create, on average, returns per employee three times higher than those of companies with fewer knowledge workers (20 percent or less of the workforce). Yet companies with more knowledge workers also show more variable returns: differences between competitors in the same industry with fewer knowledge workers.

Companies will need to reinvent work—what, where, when, how, who, and why

Companies such as Best Buy have increasingly recognized that work is not a place where you go but rather something you do. To get the most out of its corporate workforce, the company has adopted a “results-only work environment,” which gives workers big targets but lets them meet these goals any way they see fit. This approach has improved worker productivity by as much as 35 percent in departments that have deployed it.

Pricing the planet

Understanding a company’s full exposure to energy and environmental risks will in many cases be a—if not the—decisive factor determining its long-term viability.

The tension between rapidly rising resource consumption and environmental sustainability is sure to prove to be one of the next decade’s critical pressure points.

Growing demand. Even the most conservative projections for global economic growth over the next decade suggest that demand for oil, coal, iron ore, and other natural resources will rise by at least a third. About 90 percent of that increase will come from growth in emerging markets.

Constrained supply. As easy-to-tap and high-quality reserves are depleted, supply will come from harder-to-access, more costly, and more politically unstable environments.

Increased regulatory and social scrutiny. Around the world, political leaders, regulators, scientific experts, and consumers are gravitating to a new consensus that is based on fostering environmental sustainability. Climate change may be the most highly charged and visible battleground, but other issues loom: water scarcity, pollution, food safety, and the depletion of global fishing stocks, among other things. For businesses, this new sensibility will present itself in two ways: stricter environmental regulations and increasing demands from consumers—and employees—that companies demonstrate greater environmental responsibility.

Commodity prices will rise higher—and fall harder

For most resource commodities, the question is not whether supply will be sufficient but rather what will happen to the price. And that depends in part on what it takes to gain access to resources.

Business models that drive resource productivity will be just as important as those that drive labor productivity

Despite the hype over clean energy, the biggest impact from rising pressure to price the planet may well come from something much more mundane: conservation. Boosting resource productivity—like labor productivity—will become an increasingly important way for businesses to reduce both their costs and their pricing exposure. Many of these gains require low capital investments and are comparatively easy to adopt.

Posted by Manoj | Filed Under Manoj Sharma | Leave a Comment

Welcome to a zero-sum world

July 27, 2011

Welcome to a zero-sum world

The mood will be tense; get used to it

22 Nov 2010, The Economist

Over the past two years, the world’s biggest economies have grappled with the threat of a new Great Depression. During the course of 2011, it will become clear that the global economic crisis has also soured international politics.

The political malaise is linked to the economic crisis. Twenty years of good times and global economic integration, after the end of the cold war, had profound political effects. They created a “win-win world” which ensured that all the major powers had reason to be satisfied. The United States was enjoying its “unipolar moment”; the European Union was expanding and prospering; China and India felt themselves getting richer and more powerful.

But the global economic crisis has changed the logic of international relations. Both as individuals and as a nation, Americans have begun to question whether the “new world order” that emerged after the cold war still favours the United States. The rise of China is increasingly associated with job losses for ordinary Americans and a challenge to American power. The European Union is also in a defensive mood—with protectionist and anti-immigration sentiment on the rise and tensions between the nations that have adopted the European single currency.

The result of this change in mood is that, after a long period of co-operation, competition and rivalry are returning to the international system. A win-win world is giving way to a zero-sum world.

During 2011, zero-sum logic will bedevil international relations. The three most important symptoms will be worsening relations between the United States and China, arguments within the EU and an acrimonious failure to make progress on any of the big items on the international diplomatic agenda—in particular climate change and nuclear proliferation.

Even mainstream American economists are now pointing the finger at Chinese currency policy, aimed at keeping the yuan undervalued against the dollar, as a source of persistently high unemployment in America. China is likely to make small gestures on the currency issue in 2011, but these will not be enough to buy off the American critics. As a result, the chances of protectionist legislation passing through Congress will rise sharply. Barack Obama, facing a tough re-election campaign in 2012, may well sign it. That, in turn, will help to poison the wider strategic relationship between China and America.

The main symptom of this will be an increasingly overt rivalry in the Pacific. The Chinese military build-up is continuing apace. America’s strategists will push back in 2011. They will step up military exercises with regional allies, such as Japan, India and South Korea. America and China will also rub up against each other in international forums such as the United Nations, the global negotiations on climate change and the various G20 summits.

The G20, in particular, will adopt an ambitious agenda under the hyperactive chairmanship of Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France. Mr Sarkozy is a believer in global governance, relishes the spotlight and is eager to garner some favourable headlines, ahead of a difficult re-election campaign in 2012. But he is likely to be more effective at stage-managing flashy summits than producing solid achievements.

That is because zero-sum logic—with tensions between America and China at the heart of the problem—will block progress on the biggest international issues. The two nations cannot even agree on whether there are “global economic imbalances” to do with trade and currencies—let alone what to do about them. China meanwhile remains very reluctant to tighten the international squeeze on Iran over that country’s nuclear programme, preferring to protect Chinese economic and energy interests. The stand-off between developed and developing nations which has thwarted progress towards a new international agreement on climate change will also persist in 2011, with China leading the developing world’s lobby.

International tensions will also rise between rich nations, particularly within the European Union, which has hitherto presented itself as the very exemplar of enlightened international co-operation. Once again, a weak economy will provide the backdrop and Mr Sarkozy will take centre-stage. As he attempts to revive his political fortunes at home, Mr Sarkozy is likely to take increasingly populist positions on crime and immigration—and he may also license his ministers to air his differences with Germany over austerity, budget deficits and management of the European Central Bank. This will mean that EU summits in Brussels become tense and acrimonious affairs throughout the year.

All in all, 2011 will be a year when world leaders get used to a new international political environment. The era of good feelings associated with the heyday of globalisation has gone for ever. Something grimmer, less productive and less predictable has taken its place.

Gideon Rachman

Posted by Manoj | Filed Under Manoj Sharma | Leave a Comment