René Seifert - Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

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.  

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 …

5.55 PM

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Posted to Business, English, Europe, Germany, Globalization, India, Language Selection, Media, Offshoring, Technology, Uncategorized

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".

Just arrived in San Francisco after that loooooooooong 12 hour flight from Munich in the loooooooooong Airbus A340-600, the strech-limo among commercial airplanes. Before heading to sleep to be as fit as possible - given the 9 hours time-shift - for the Web 2.0 Expo starting tomorrow, still wanted to share this fantastic picture from 34,000 feet north-north-west of Reykjavik. The icebergs of artica, standing proudly in their white serenity far beneath the engines of our Airbus. (Yes, and I am aware of the irony that the very same engines at that altitude might cause the icebergs to fade and that I am part of the problem …)

I am happily looking forward to the conference which I had attended last year already. It's a very hands-on event with learnings not so much like on the Web 2.0 Summit in November on the Big Business and Grand Talks of Bigwigs, but rather on getting things done. Not too bad either, if this is what the end matters.

So now I stranded here in San Francisco for a week, me, the "Digital Nomad" how a phenomenal special in "The Economist" has put together two weeks ago. Lots of worthwhile thoughts which had also made me think. For one, geography is definitely history. Many offices no longer have settings for each employee, but they rather provide space which can be instantaneously designed as an individual or collective place - with ubiquitous Wi-Fi. Or you don't really need an office at all, working from home or connecting from e.g. a Starbucks is increasingly becoming the norm. Anyway, the "Third Place" besides or between home and office is the new buzzword for both an infrastructural framework of the “homo mobilis” and a huge opportunity for innovative entrepreneurs. Thanks to tools like virtually accessible disk space, online social networks like XING or Skype the walls of a company and the borders of countries have been flattened alike.

Not really surprisingly, I could find myself very well in this portray. And I could second the downsides of this development. Being always on, everywhere connected but never there. I have been describing my state of mind increasingly like a self-selected semi-autism where I am cognitively in my own world with little influence of the real world around me. As a remedy I have actively sought to connect to friends whom I care for in person at these places to make that decisive difference. At the end, that's what I realized, nothing can replace the holistic experience of having someone you care for in front of you, with his or her mimic, gesture and kinetics. Poking someone on Facebook and poking someone on the shoulder is not one and the same thing.

3.53 AM

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Posted to Globalization, Travel, Veritas

I remember when I heard this song for the first time in the back-seat of a car driving through Mumbai, it's humid heat, it dusty streets when hardly any traffic moves forward, I was taken in immediately. It came from a CD which I understood was from the same artist, and as distances in the speed of snail in Mumbai provide ample time, the song came at least three times. I must have heard it a few times on random occasions, but never "got a grip on it". Untill I recently bought a compilation of "Top 50 Bollywood Songs". And as I lost it, so I found it. "Bulla Ki Jaana Kaun", by the Indian artist Rabbi Shergill. My phantom pain of missing out on the songs got more than alleviated by the additional detection of the video on YouTube. Here it is, and it is as stunning as the song, it's very much like India, it's kind of also a bit of "my India".

"Bulla Ki Jaana Maen Kaun" actually means "I don't know who I am" and pays tribute to the famous Urdu poet Bullae Shah, a beacon of peace between rivalling Muslims and Sikhs in Punjab. It's worthwhile noting that the poet wrote at the beginning of the 19th century, yet his message hasn't lost anything from its relevance today. In sync with the lyrics, the video shows what the mystery of India is about. Many people, different people who in spite of their various background form a "unity through diversity" as writer and diplomat Shashi Tharoor explains in his fluid book "The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone". And the pre-eminent statement "I don't know who I am" serves much less a confession of one's disorientation or, worse, lack if identity than the acknowledgement of one's humility during the pressing quest for truth. 

Hope you like the song, too, along with the video, the entry-scene of the magic Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay, with it's fast cuts, it's deliberate blurs, it's changing places, colours and faces. In all the possible abstraction of a song, its whole mood reflects precisely that India is a never-ending stream of discovery. Where now knowing who you are, is both a starting point and and end in itself. 

4.47 PM

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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. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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". 

8.19 PM

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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. 

8.13 AM

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Happy that I made it this season at all. To my own disgrace this was my only skiing occasion in this winter season, but at least it was a very good one. Almost as a kind of tradition, by now the 3rd year in a row a few EO members made it again to St. Moritz which undoubtably is one of the most beautiful skiing areas in the world. Both from what mother nature in terms of skiing possibilities has to offer and the culinary experiences around, like here us four Thomas, Anju , Peter and me … 

… sitting for lunch at El Paradiso and enjoying the magnificient panorama behind the Swiss flag.

Some more pictures of the events are here on Flickr. We had fun on the slope, fun at dinner and also inspiring conversations where Peter for example rightly said that the beauty of EO was that you can really be who you are and don't have to play a role which supposedly is more conformist to whatsoever restrained norms. I fully agree. 

So also this year it was a real worthwhile experience, hope that next year it will happen again. At the end another experience where I guess I grew out of doing it myself, yet watching it nevertheless was fun. Trying to cross a water pool at 2400 meters altitude at zero degrees Celsius, but not necessarily always succeeding … :-)

 

10.05 PM

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Yesterday in Bangalore I felt honoured to attend a function of my friend and fellow EO -member Dr. Arjun Kalyanpur and his wife Dr. Sunita Maheshwari. Arjun is a radiologist, his wife Sunita a pediatric cardiologist. Five years ago, without having an M.B.A. or financial backing, this doctor-couple started a company out of their living room: Teleradiology Solutions. A medical service provider which delivers radiology-reports from Bangalore to the world. Or like Sunita explained: “A brown company in a white space.” Today the company boasts 160 employees and sits in the reputed technology-district of Whitefield in outer Bangalore. This is the building with the chaotic Indian reality to the left, and the highly performing Indian reality to the right. (All the pictures from the function are here in my Flickr-Set ).

Teleradiology Solutions’ value proposition is very straightforward: Enhance the capacity of radiologists to hospitals in the U.S., Singapore and India by a remote service, including a cost-advantage, where radiologists in India would receive digital scans via broadband. In their speciality “emergency cases”, these tele-doctors would submit their diagnosis back as fast as 30 minutes. The company is the only provider outside of Singapore which has been granted the necessary approval by the Singapore Health Ministry to do so and is currently making inroads to Europe as well.

The reason for yesterday’s function at 5 pm for High Tea was the next consequential step to enable the company’s further growth. Hence, a state-of-the-art training facility under the Sanskrit name of “Rad Gurunkel” has been inaugurated. The guest of honour to do so was Ms. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, founder and Chairman of Biocon Ltd . Ms Shaw, besides being the richest woman in India, is highly respected across the entire country and often quoted as a role-model for women to reach highest achievements in a predominantly male-dominated society. Ms. Shaw is here with the candle lighting the lamp, Arjun to the right in the black suit.

The speeches of Ms. Shaw, Arjun and Sunita reflected pretty much the key-challenge for knowledge-driven companies like Biocon and Teleradiology Solutions: Scale. Getting the right people on board, bringing them to the required level of skills, and retaining them by growing these skills. Likewise, Infosys has recently invested US-$ 300 mn into an entire campus in Mysore. Being an entrepreneur myself, I felt amazed by the level of meticulous detail how Arjun’s company has artfully crafted processes which would be able to replicate quality of a radiology diagnosis 8,000 km such as if the doctor was right sitting beside his patient. There is for instance one FTE (full time employee) only taking care that the regulatory requirements from the U.S. are met and audited accordingly.

Constant training of medical, technical and administrative staff has according to Arjun in the past proved the most important factor in attaining that quality along with a very low defect-rate in this not very error-tolerant area. In order to be able to take the company to the next level, the new training facility will be able to scale and institutionalize the various training programmes. Here is Arjun on the right (still in the black suit, not in a white lab coat :-) and me to the left.

I wish Arjun and Sunita and all the fantastic people I met in their company yesterday all the best for their future aspirations which are constantly bolstered by hard work, dedication and honesty. In that respect, I felt deeply moved by a quotation which Sunita brought forward from the great Mahatma Gandhi: “Learn as if you will live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow.”