Key message: the world is changing – economy is transforming, new kind of workers emerging, changes in demography and development in technology enable global operation and competition. The world has become flat. To set the stage, we have to take a look at the development of the economy around us during the past years. In today’s world many things are hugely different from 100 years ago, very much different from 50 years ago and they are also different from what they were no more than 5-10 years ago. The realities of the world as we know them have changed dramatically just in a few years - and things that we have taken for granted are not certain anymore. 1) The world market has evolved during the past 200 years from pure agriculture, to manufacturing and during the second half of the last century into services. Developed economies are almost 70 % services – and developing countries are catching up rapidly. 2) The 20th Century saw the emergence of the Knowledge worker. 40 % of the work force by 1999. In the 21st century, the knowledge worker will be the dominating figure of the economy - decisive for innovation and value creation. 3) The world is also facing huge demographic imbalances that are building up. Between the regions of the world as the population is not evenly distributed around the globe. And within the regions, as for example in Europe the population is aging. This creates an imbalance between the number of working and retired population as well as takes a lot of knowledge and skills out of the market. Forrester research group in July15, 2005: In EU15 countries the number of working population is decreasing (20-59: 208,7->151,2M) and the number of people over 60 is increasing significantly (>60: 82,1->125,1M) between 2000 (28%) ->2050 (45%). For example in Italy this means that by 2025 over 32% of Italians are over 60 years old. If 20% is under 20 years old, one Italian worker is supporting one other person in the society. The gross domestic product of countries vary a lot between the developed and developing countries. GDP per capita (PPP) USD India 3300, China 6800 EU average 28100 (FR 29900, UK 30300, DE 30400, IT 29200 , SP 25500) Nordic (NO 42300, DK34600, FI 30900, SE 29800) USA 41800 4) Technology is lowering the threshold to market entry and through that creates increased competition. Technology is cheaper than ever – we are producing more transistors today than rice grains – and at a cheaperprice. And with the connectedness of everything, you are able to do business with anybody around the world. 5) With everything else, the pace of innovation is accelerating. We have seen the emergence of disruptive innovation in shortening intervals. Just as an example: It took over 100 years for telephone to penetrate the market, Internet did that in less than 10 years and now over the past 2-3 years, internet phone calls have rapidly started to gain popularity - especially within the younger consumers, companies and in cross border calls. 6) Despite some issues in the world trade organization (WTO) process, more open markets are opening up and at the same time new competitors from emerging markets are competing within our territory. Globalization is inevitable. The barriers of trade are coming down. - Or as Tom Friedman, a New York Times columnist wrote in his book, the world has become FLAT again. As I said, things that we take for granted may change over time. 350 years BC Aristotele expressed as common knowledge that the Earth is round. That fact was disputed later on with a flat world theory - but again confirmed by scientists later. And here we are again – FLAT as a pancake. Go figure… [click] But what all this boils down to is that global competition is increasing at all levels – goods, services, people and work.
companies have evolved from international to multi national to globally integrated over the time. The middle row in the picture shows how the organizational model and characteristic operations evolve in the different stages of internationalization process. IBM example: we go to where the skills are, doing accounting in Bratislava and Research in Russia and purchasing in wherever, etc. etc.
Examples of flows: between 2000 and 2003 alone, foreign firms built 60,000 manufacturing plants in China. Some of these factories target the local Chinese market, but others target the global market. European chemical companies, Japanese carmakers, and U.S. industrial conglomerates are all building (or have declared their intention to build) factories in China to supply export markets around the world. Imports Since 1995: imports have risen from 12% of gross domestic product to about 17% foreign money as a percentage of domestic investment increased from 7% to 32% Between 2001 and today, imports rose by three percentage points as a share of GDP, one of the main reasons that job growth was so slow. By comparison, the import share rose by only one percentage point or so in the recoveries of the early 1980s and the early 1990s. Global Investing U.S. venture capitalists investing more than $400 million in Chinese and Indian companies in the third quarter alone - National Venture Capital Assn. Ineffective Action Despite $125B spent on medical research over the past 5 years, the US has a large and growing trade deficit in advanced biotech and medical research US Fed has raised interest rates 17 times since 2004 (more than 4%) but the rate on a 10-year government bond is 4.6%, exactly where it was in 2004
Examples of business units: Systems & Technology Group Integrated Supply Chain Global Technology Services Real Estate Operations Software Group Global Asset Recovery Services Research