Archive for the 'Business' Category
8W8: Taking Globalization and the Internet to the next Level
Yesterday evening in Munich I listened to a speech from the CEO of Boston Consulting Group Hans-Peter Bürkner about "globalization", an issue that has my natural affinity. Yet, the speech as such I found rather "moderately novel" as its main lines of thought were put forward by Thomas Friedman already 3 years ago in “The World is Flat”. Especially, Mr. Bürkner's part about the role of governments was more of wishful thinking than a reality-based account on the true interests of such a body which is depending on a free electorate.
Anyway, in case someone is interested on more vision and foresight in terms of "what's next" on the global scene, being addressed from an entirely different angle in the shape of a novel, I happily recommend 8W8. The author is Ralf Hirt whom I met in January after moderating the India-panel at the DLD-conference in Munich. It's instrumental to understand the background of Ralf to become clear on both his motivation and insight: He has held leadership positions in the internet industry for a decade and has lived all over the world, in his home town Stuttgart, Hong Kong, Sydney, London and currently New York. In crossing these two lines of experience extrapolating their status-quo plus visioning with lots of foresight, he conceived his first book 8W8. It is worthwhile mentioning that the book is indeed fiction, yet the concept of a "new world modelling engine" are not so far away that this book would fall into the category of "science fiction".
Well, what is it about? The storyline deals with 15 high calibre people from of the "Golden Sky", a community committed with the aspiration to change the world for the sake of good. These 15 people come from a whole array of diverse backgrounds, like Oskar Feller, an editor for a leading internet magazine, Maria who is a doctor developing high-scale programmes to fight HIV/AIDS, Priyanka from India who is an IT-crack working for a global media company or Emanuel, a philosopher and Taoist who has been named for the Nobel Prize. All the characters of the story are here on the 8W8-blog. This group of people is hosted by Winston Chee, a billionaire internet-entrepreneur from China in his island on Hawaii EA-RA.
In this serene and secluded environment, the 15 brains spend a whole week picking each other brains and inspiring each other to solve one crucial problem: How to make the interrelations of economies and people visible in a sort of virtual map-overlay on top of the existing geography. What they come up with is the new world modelling engine "8W8" which can be pictured as a virtual helicopter the "pilot" would use to fly over the terrain of the earth to make these invisible connections visible. Delving even deeper into the concept it transcends into a new form of radical constructivism as the vision the pilot would receive on his dashboard would be a crossover between absolute measurable truths and his set of values/selective perception. What the pilot would get to see is both on “earth level” and on “sky level” the “volumes” of a whole set of parameters. The former range from hard factors like population, GNP, metrics on infrastructure, public institutions to innovation, the latter comprise for example metrics for democracy, human rights, quality of living, level of terrorism and such.
Yet, what is more that beyond statistics on GNP or PPP which are available as top-level data today, 8W8 equally entails a bottom-up approach from the level of the “element” (individual) which will aggregate in “streams” into “Global Space Tribes” according to its interest, e.g. “MBA Jazz Wireless Tribe (MBAJWT)”, “Catholic Fast Food Blue Collar Single Mother of Four (CFFBCSMF)” or the “Taoist Tribe (TT)”. These become even more interesting if one looks at actual vertically positioned Web 2.0 platforms which either try to bring a community of like-minded people together like “Dogster” or provide a tool to define and organize a target group of any shape like Ning. Yet, both of these platforms have in common that they require someone to become a “member” by “registration” and do all these various steps actively online. In that context I do believe that there will be not in too far future a kind of “ambient computing” where the unconscious behaviour patterns will be able to bring people in a meaningful way together. Hence, aggregating this sort of behaviour and making it somehow visible is not that far away from 8W8’s concept of the “Global Space Tribe”.
One thing I had hoped throughout the whole story to occur, is a bit more of conflict, friction, sex: As Oskar and Theresa, a computer scientist, seem to come along very well, I waited for that forbidden kiss, the clandestine quickie to happen under the waterfall of perfectly pristine EA-RA. Not for the sake of sensation, but to portray people regardless of their brains and social status when they become most human: emotional to the extent of irrational. The figures appear prim and proper, and at best tease each other lightly in order to surely succumb to perfect harmony. Irrespective of that, what I liked from a storytelling point of view is the ability to portray a broad set of global citizens who find a common denominator to discuss a topic, be focussed in defining a goal, accepting each other’s variety of viewpoints, being non-judgemental and fully embark on the beneficial concept of diversity.
Altogether, I liked the book a lot as it is coherently able to explain the road ahead in globalization by the force of the internet and the road ahead of the internet by the force of globalization. What gave me food for thought via the concepts of “Global Space Tribes” was the decreasing influence of governments, because free people in a free world are able to cross-pollinate their ideas and aspirations regardless of the strangulating rigidity of what we call a country today. For someone like me who happily articulates his despise of today’s governments, the vision of 8W8 is one which deserves active pursuit.
Who is interested in buying the book, Amazon has it, either in print or for the Kindle.
Guest at SeoFM.com in Munich: SEO-Outsourcing to India
All my 10 years of being a radio-presenter till 2003 slightly re-appeared yesterday night when I was guest at the radio show at SeoFM.com, a weekly online-format of Germany's leading Search-Engine-Optimizers (SEOs) Marcus Tandler (a.k.a. Mediadonis ) and his "partner in crime" Ralf Götz (a.k.a. Fridaynite). It's a one hour talk format which is about the latest development/gossip from the SEO-scene mixed with a lot of infantile jokes - to which I contributed gladly :-) In addition, Mediadonis interviewed my on my business of offshore outsourcing to India for projects revolving around SEO, which could be either building some content-centred apps, some BPO driven tasks for e.g. ad-campains or content-production. Here is the link to the show for time-shifted listening (German language).
So one after the other:
- Sure, surprise, surprise, India is good at software engineering, yet as I have written already on this blog a few times, it's always a number game, hence: If you have 5 people for at least 3 months, it's worth considering. The more and the longer - the better.
- For BPO also big numbers pay off and it always will be much easier, maybe only feasible, if the task is not to a large degree dependant on German language.
- Content-production can work, again in English language. The challenge will be in recruiting and quality assurance, and again, will only pay off with scale.
Mediadonis charmingy titled this show "Rent a Jobkiller", no wonder as I had explained plainly : "My business model rests on two pillars: One is slashing German jobs and increasing unemployment, the other exploiting poor Indians and taking away their future". As there are really people who argue such nonsense with fully conviction, I have made it a virtue to repeat it ironically as often as possible …
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10 Years Ahead: Vision from Innovative Market Research
Came along this very interesting observation from Delphi , an "innovative market researcher" from Germany who is looking today at society in 2017. The focus is Germany with a tangible bullet-point list on the various aspect of change, like my favourites
- The retreating state prompts an enhanced self-responsibility of the individual for health, private pensions, continuous education, etc.
- It is about "re-conquering" one’s own sovereignty about when and where to make a decision.
- People start interpreting the gaps and blanks of the retreating state as their own creative spaces: empowerment instead of accepting deficits.
- To reach their goal of a self-determined life, people form situational alliances: cooperation, dialogue and networking are the key principles people will live by.
- The "New Social Responsibility" combines public spirit and self-interest in a win-win-situation.
Other countries in Europe, but also Russia and the United States are displayed here. Not too surprisingly, globalization gets perceived predominantly as a threat where the reaction ranges from patriotism to denial to retreat into the local community. Looking a bit at the comparison between Germany and the other countries, my old joke seems to get confirmed that fortunately Germany in its own shitty state maintains with France and Italy two other countries it can still look down to ;-)
Overall I picked those 5 bullet-points above as I feel they reflect pretty well my own values according to which I try to live in 2008. My disbelief in Vater Staat (=Father Goverment, as a German proverbs tend to say) is tremendously profound and although the strangulation by tax and even more tax, besides other intrusions, are not coming to an end, people with sufficient flexibility will make their own choices about where and how they want to live and follow the old valid principle "You better have a plan for yourself, before someone else has his plan for you".
Open Letter to Mr. Rajiv Memani (Ernst & Young India)
On February 7th 2008, during the fantastic EO University in Delhi (I wrote about it here), Mr. Rajiv Memani, Country Head of Ernst & Young India gave a presentation which was insightful. Yet, the aftermath of that presentation was it it own way insightful, too, and I thought I write a few open lines to him.
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Dear Mr. Memani,
On February 7th 2008 you really excited a whole crowd of committed members of the Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) with your appearance at our University in Delhi. You held a profound, analytical and highly competent presentation about the state of the Indian economy, its opportunities and its risks. For me (as I wrote on this blog ) and for many others it was one of the highlights of our learning programme. And, as entrepreneurs, we understood well that you were not just showing up for charitable reasons, but certainly also as the leader of Ernst & Young India. To describe company as a "for profit" would be stating the obvious.
So your company certainly took a good decision to act as the lead sponsor of the event, with your logo all around and a desk to start a conversation with one of your employees which could at some point lead to an engagement for your firm. The platform you selected for this kind of activity was without doubt in marketing terms "highly targeted" towards your potential client group.
Yet, what struck me more than strange is your personal and your organizational behaviour in the aftermath of the event. You held a presentation with insightful Power Point Charts where you promised to share them with whoever would require them. He or she should just drop you an e-mail. Smart move, unassuming and purpose-driven: permission marketing at its best. Also, you and I had a brief chat after your presentation, exchanged business cards and shook hands with the mandatory, easy-going "let's keep in touch".
Sadly, unlike Ratan Tata's famous words "a promise is a promise", your promise doesn't seem to bear any meaning. A week later, I wrote you a friendly e-mail reverting to your promise politely asking for the presentation. That I did not get any reply, did not diminish my perseverance. Hence, I addressed the super-helpful staff of EO who had coordinated your appearance. From the messages I received from them, I have not the slightest doubt that they tried everything to contact you directly as well as members from your staff. No reaction, nobody ever returned their calls and e-mails.
Isn't that ironic, Mr. Memani, that your organization spends significant money on customer acquisition on such an event, you spend your valuable time there - all for the purpose to build relationships with potential clients. And then right when when this purpose starts to materialize, there is just a black hole that swallows all the matter.
I wonder what I should make out of that. From any standpoint of business reason, you are clearly part of a dysfunctional organization which is counterproductive to its own alleged objectives. That you in your responsibility might not have the time to reply personally would be more than understood, but obviously there is the inability to establish and run a proper staff around you. Can it be that the headline of the Financial Express "Rajiv Memani ascends the EYI Throne" was by accident so right, because you are sitting in your ivory tower, detached from operations and devoid of the ability to lead by example?
Anyway, Mr. Memani, let's not make a diplomatic crisis out of that, I'll keep your presentation in good memory, yet felt the inner urge to share these thoughts as a sort of peer-to-peer feedback with you.
With best regards
René Seifert
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ADDITION on April 5th 2008:
Thanks Dima for your comment and moreover for sending me this dearly sought-after precious asset :-) As I try to the best of my abilities to stay fair: The presentation from Mr. Memani and Ernst & Young was really excellent. And potentially my intrinsic statement that the follow up on the event was generally crap an exaggeration. I also of course don't assume at all that there was any deliberate "discrimination" between Dima and me. Yet, my description of events on my end was still accurate. So overall, I'd suggest, "shit happens" and case closed.
On another line I find it a fantastic example of the power of blogs as a conversational medium with all its opportunity to fill gaps, straighten things out and make adjustments on the truth.
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UPDATE on July 30th 2008
The events around this blog post don't stop neither online nor offline. 10 days back I got a request (not from Ernst & Young) to take this post down which I declined. Given the internal nature of that discussion, I feel unable to share its details here.
However, this particular blog post is a phenomenal example of what Clay Shirkey's book "Here comes Everybody" is dealing with: The power of blogs to make the invisible visible and through that the irrelevant relevant. Again, this mentioned presentation is not the navel of the world, but still interestingly this blog post does evoke action. Yesterday, I received a tremendously friendly e-mail from an an associate of Ernst & Young who wrote that he was "truly shocked" to learn that I had not received the presentation. In addition, he was so friendly to send it right across to me attached to his mail. For this my deepest most professional and most respectful thanks.
What happened by this blog post? A more or less vivid narration of an event mixed with my personal opinion received not just attention, but evoked action. For me personally, the case is closed for a long time with no bad blood or anger whatsoever against Ernst & Young. As I admitted in the paragraph above, I believe that the choice of my words - albeit true in facts - has been overly harsh. At the same time I believe, constantly updating on the "developing story" everybody involved becomes a winner: Obviously me for receiving the presentation :-) but over all Ernst & Young: Nothing else than the bottom-up commitment of smart associates can better refute my notion that their employer was a "dysfunctional organization".
Bonvu.com: Smart Service for European Shoppers in the U.S.
The frenzy in Europe is all around because of the low Dollar. I heard of people flying to New York to go shopping for designer clothes which could be less than 60 % compared to European price levels. Sure, seeing Big Apple for a weekend as an experience itself is worth a trip. (I will be in San Francisco myself in 3 weeks for the Web 2.0 Expo and I am just considering getting myself an Apple iPhone . so here we are … )
Yet who is really just into getting stuff cheaper does not have to travel to the U.S. necessarily. What I like at eBay from the very beginning, even before it got traction in the German market with its German site, was that it made the world definitely flatter. You could see products on their flagship .com-site, bid for them and if you were lucky, win. Yet, it became pretty clear that there were a few hick-ups: First. many dealers did not ship to an address outside of the U.S. and made that pretty clear from the beginning. For second, buying an exciting article in the "long tail" for $8.37 and then paying for shipping to Europe (provided the dealer would do it) some $60, not to mention the hassle with customs declaration, made the whole procedure thoroughly unrewarding.
Bonvu.com seems to narrow that gap by offering a solution to exactly that. You get an a shipping-address in the U.S. (Bonvu's logistic centre), you can have you items inspected (including a picture which is sent to you), being stored for a while, getting bundled with other incoming shipments (huge benefit), made ready for customs clearance and finally being sent in one shipment to your home address in Europe. Great, isn't it. Of course the company takes a fee for that service, but looking at their ratecard , the prices are absolutely reasonable.
I really like this sort of service, because a similar concept similar brought me 4 years ago to India. There is still so much potential to not just do such a service between the U.S. and Europe, but also between many other countries. And there is absolutely no reason why free people in a free world should support the artificial windfall profits of fat corporates based on inexplicable price differentiation.
Thanks EO Mumbai for your Hospitality
Who has ever been in event management, knows how much effort it takes to get an event for 250 people rolling, especially if it takes 4 days. And besides a perfect “organization” still make it feel natural and authentic so that everybody parts his way with a noble feeling of inspiration and enrichment. And that’s exactly what EO Bombay managed to put together in the last four days from Thursday to Sunday for the “Regional Integration Event” (RIE 2008) where all the chapters of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization meet annually. The entire picture set on Flickr is here.
One of the highlights was the “Bollywood-Night”, with a fashion show of India’s premier designer JJ Valaya. Here the video of the grand finale with the master himself briefly stepping on stage.
For the motto “Dream Big”, the speakers were absolutely outstanding and in the overall very complementary in what they had to convey. Shashi Ruia from Essar, estimated at a net worth of US-$ 10 bn made a good start, a bit like a father explaining in a very seasoned way to his children what matters, what to look for and what to avoid in business and in life generally.
Zia Mody, a prominent legal consultant and lawyer described what it takes for Indian companies to acquire companies abroad. Ms. Mody is known for her hard work and dryly began her presentation with “Sleep is for Sissies” :-) A panel discussion with industry captains from private equity have a good insight on the thought process and the nuances of the players in this field.
For the most fascinating speaker, however, was the juvenile Sunjay Reddy from the infrastructure developer GVK, the company which on the bid on reforming the notorious Bombay Airport. More information on what it will be is here.
I have never seen a person in my life who has to put up which such piles of shit in his work from a hugely complex construction project in the first place to a community of slum dwellers to be relocated, to opposing populistic politicians to the Shiv Sena for displacing a sacred statue, and so on and so on. At in spite of all this, still remaining not just a good mood, but even spreading a contagious enthusiasm up to the point where he authentically and without irony speaks about “a dream I am following”. After his 90 minutes presentation we all got up and gave him what he deserved: standing ovations.
On Saturday morning after everybody had re-assembled from the previous night’s party with bollywood film producer Karan Johar, we eagerly listened to Dr R A Mashelkar’s “lecture” on “Innovation – to make the Impossible possible”. Undoubtedly a unique source of inspiration for the gentleman being India’s most recognized scientist who is also an advisor for the Prime Minister of India.
The later afternoon ended with an exciting ride on a speed boat in east in the bay of Bombay west from the Taj Mahal Hotel. And this was my favourite, our highly esteemed fellow member Takeshi Izuka fighting the wind and Mehool Bhuva coming to his help. Yep, we did not fall short of fun at all …
So thanks again to EO Bombay, spearheaded for the event by Javed Tapia and all his other fellow-members who put all their time and heart into making this generous hospitality happen.
Platforms of a global Society
„Mother India“ has me back. After a few days in Bangalore, I just arrived in Delhi, India’s capital and the center of political gravity. Delhi breathes quite a different atmosphere than South India, it’s more hectic, occasionally more rude that Bangalore’s soft-talking “ya-ya-ya”-manners. And not to mention then climate where Bangalore is advancing towards the hot season with temperatures above 30° C while Delhi at this time of the year falls down to 6°C.
I am staying at the Taj Palace in the Diplomatic Enclave where the otherwise improvised Indian reality all of a sudden becomes so overly-perfect. The reason being here is the upcoming EO University which is about to commence tomorrow with friends and fellow-entrepreneurs from all over the world, some whom I met at the respective universities in Tokyo and Berlin, new ones who are eager to get inspired of what the country to offer. Just wanted to share my personal observation that the pace of globalization and hence economic integration is accelerating with a few examples I have come across recently:
- Apparantly, there is a magazine in India “At a Glance” focusing on the target group of Expats. The magazine also runs a website which is somehow stuck in the online stone-age with just an IP-address instead of a proper URL. Well, that’s in the irony, a perfect example of the masala from aspirations, a hands-on culture, yet running at different paces at the same time for getting a market vs. caring for quality.
- Then there is a yet-another-social network, this one connecting expats around the world InterNations whose site-structure looks like a straightforward copy-cat of XING. But certainly another catalyst to propel a concept of “global citizenship”, a model which I am convinced is strongly on the rise.
- All major consultancies of the world have a distinct set-up to facilitate their clients in their international expansions. From my perception of e.g. Ernst & Young at the DLD Conference, they seem to run on the customer-facing side a 2-dimensional matrix: One for the industry, the other for geography. So if I was a German media company interested in India, I could speak to Gerhard Müller , head of the tech, media & entertainment-practise of the firm, who would then join hands with his Indian counterpart Farokh Balsara. To mention the efforts of another consultancy, KPMG publishes an excellent quarterly magazine about “Emerging Markets”. It’s in German language and I just read the 4/2007 in the flight from Bangalore to Delhi. What is more, some of the many studies like e.g. “Mobile Payments in Asia-Pacific” are also available in English and available for download via PDF.
- Today I got an e-mail invitation from Stefan Graf, Consul General of Germany in Chennai to a attend a panel discussion with Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Bangalore on February 26th about "New Concepts for Sustainable Urban Development". The topic is very hot as the trend to the supercity is gaining momentum as Richard Wurman's 192021-initiative shows: That we are about to have 19 cities in which more than 20 mn people live in the 20th century. And there is a lot of common questions to be asked how so many people with diverse backgrounds and intentions are going to form a purposeful habitat.
And here on YouTube I stumbled-upon two videos from the India-Panel I was moderating two weeks ago in Munich which cover altogether 20 of the 30 minutes from the session:
Virtual Personal Assistant in India
It's funny to see how journalists copy & paste topics from each other. I realized that when I was featured in the SPIEGEL some 15 months ago and a flood of interview requests followed up. Similarly appears to me a current interest in virtual PAs (personal assistants) from India in the German media. I have read myself quite a few articles about e.g. GetFriday or YourManIndia in the last weeks. But I guess the issue both as a journalistic topic and a service worthwhile to consider has been magnified by the success of Tomothy Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Work Week". The book is all about efficiency by outsourcing as much as possible into a self-functioning and self-healing personal eco-system. Hereby, such a personal assistant in India at reasonable cost can help booking travels, doing research, online shopping etc.
Funnily, in the aftermath of the media coverage a few German friends asked me if such a service would make sense for the German market. My take on that: Certainly, one could create demand for it, I don't see the Germans in that respect different from US-Americans where the service has gained traction. However, I rather see a supply side problem with German skills in India. To put it quite narrow: As soon as German language is required to get a task successfully done, I see significant quality issues. The number of Indians who are so fluent in German is not that high and those who are up to the level will easily get a job in an ever higher-valued and hence higher-paid job. So early on, one will get into nasty operational, quality and especially scaling issues.
So if I had to make a call as an entrepreneur or investor, I would make a pass on such a business proposal. Yet, if the task can be narrowly reduced to pure English skills, well, then the world is flat and the service can be targeted anywhere.
Inspiring DLD Conference in Munich
Even after returning from "down under" in Australia, I was a bit "down under" with my blogging. But today is a good opportunity to come back to light after an amazing 3 day DLD-Conference in Munich which ended yesterday. On the eLAB-Blog, I wrote a bit more on it, especially about 23andMe, a "Web 2.0 genetics" company which was showcased. The mix of the panels and participants was phenomenal which such high-calibres like Craig Venter, Paolo Coelho, Martha Steward or Marissa Meyer being around. Lots of extremely networking opportunity by talking to a whole lot of extremely smart, positive and energetic people. My photo-set of the event is here.
This year, I was not just a participant, but felt very honoured when Rupert Schäfer , die producer of the DLD; asked me if I wanted to moderate the India-Panel on Monday morning. I guess it was a real sucess with my two guests Farokh Balsara, partner at Ernst & Young India, and Vishal Gondal , founder & CEO of Indiagames and a friend whom I've known for 2 years by now. Here a picture of us two after the panel.
We had a good conversation about the major differences in India compared to "the west" in terms of demographics, media consumption, pick-up of mobile usage and on the other hand some insights how to enter the Indian market in the role of an entrepreneur or a manager in charge. Both guests had lots to say especiall as they were coming from quite a complementary background. Here is also a brief video with the first 2 minutes about this India panel.
From the feedback I got the audience really liked it and I feel India should be way more promoted in Europe. Thus, I also talked to Loic LeMeur and we found it a good idea to work on an India panel at his conference LeWeb in December. Let's keep the fingers crossed that it works out, would be really cool.
Shady Sales Practise from Netchina - continued
Ah, I got mail. Guess from whom? From the one and only. Mr. Mars from Planet Earth who purpotes to have read my blog-post. I just wonder if I am talking to a mental retard who simply doesn't get it. Here we are:
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Hello Mr:
I have already read your blog carefully,and I know your attitude.As the rule of intenational,the registration of domain name is open to the world. We are the legal organization to deal with these domain names with Chinese government.Please notice:We are the legal organization,and have the ability to register the Chinese domain names for you.I do not deny what you said do exists.And you have right to doubt and utter the saying.As the registrars, we are very busy in our work,and we have no time and right to dispute with our client.So we would not explain much.Most of our work is to imform and get the opinion.I just want to know whether you intend to use your priority to register your domain names.We have no relationship with anything else.Please reply us as soon as possible.Thank you.
Best Regards,
Mars zhou
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