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The G-20 meeting and global supply chains

World leaders are gathering at the G-20 meet in London to find common approaches to deal with the global financial crisis. Let's hope that there is some solid movement forward despite some concerns with more bailouts by France and Germany. A quick ,common and global approach is imperative to bring some measure of stability to global supply chains.For supply chains run on flow of money,goods and services and information. Both money and goods and services are not flowing well and the recession is fueling unrest in the developed world raising risks in parts of supply chains - not used to risks.You load a truck with goods in Western Europe and expect it to reach and don't need to have contingencies in place as in many developing markets.

A positive aspect in all of the current situation is that today there is instant global information flow and media coverage - and this should help resolve the crisis at multiple levels including at the G-20.

Towards global B-to-B trust and transparency in 2009

2008 has been a watershed year in many ways and everyone is talking about 2009 with hopes of better times.

There is one theme that should become important in 2009 given the learning from the Mortgage Crisis, Auto bailout and resulting  union supplier competitor unity and the Madoff scandal. And that is more trust and transparency that would have to be re-built from the ground up.

We should see more online transactions and use of the Internet both by businesses and also consumers as with the recent zoom in Amazon sales. When transactions are digital and open to scrutiny by those concerned on a real time basis- there is a real shot for everyone concerned- to chime in with comments and concerns- in time. So as more systems go online there will be more integration both for the sake of reducing costs and improving efficiency but also bringing real time trust and transparency in dealings.

Wishing readers a Very Happy and Prosperous 2009 !

The Conceptual Age - reporting from ISM 93rd Conference St. Louis

Just returned from a wonderful conference - the ISM 93rd at St. Louis. St. Louis is a nice place and the conference center was great as was the metro train transportation which I used to check out a surprisingly great Indian Restaurant, Rasoi.

There were many great sessions throughout the conference and I will probably allude to them in future posts. However, Daniel Pink as the lunchtime speaker on Monday simply resonated with me and many other participants. Pink did not probably say something totally new but did manage to convey his message really well.

In a nutshell, Pink said that three things were changing our world, particularly in the developed West. These were Abundance, Asia and Automation.  His illustration of abundance was rather neat in that the rather new self storage industry is for the extra "stuff" we have gathered and the self storage industry exceeds 22 B $ and is larger than Hollywood. Asia  and the impact of China on manufacturing and India on services is well known as are the burgeoning markets and aspirations in these countries.  But it is automation that is the clincher of  the "conceptual age". If it can be codified and written down it will be either outsourced or automated, preferably automated. Interestingly, it is not Indian accountants that took over all the tax returns but the 29 $ software you can buy at Wal-Mart to file your taxes. Why would you pay 100+ $  to a tax preparer ??

This leads to Daniel Pink's thesis that it is necessary to have a prepared left brain that is analytical, sequential and is geared to doing well in the SAT. However, the left brain alone is not enough because by definition what the left brain can do, can be codified,written down and then outsourced and finally automated. So beyond the left brain is developing the "conceptual" skills of the right brain that 's about synthesis, modeling and innovation in your field of expertise no matter what your "left brained" expertise is. Very interesting and provoking and so thought many of the participants I talked to.

Dubai holds World Outsourcing Forum

Some real notables of the world of outsourcing got together at Dubai recently for The World Outsourcing Forum.  What is very creditable is that there were prominent representatives not only from India and China but also from Romania, Russia and Sri Lanka. It was nice to see academic and scholarly representation by way of Dr. Soumodip Sarkar from Portugal. In a detailed presentation Ismail Al Naqi, Director of Dubai Outsource Zone makes the case for Dubai as a center for setting up outsourcing delivery. The Dubai Outsource Zone sure looks like solving some of the perennial infrastructure problems of many other locations. The goal of 120,000 knowledge workers in Dubai by 2010 also seems very possible. Congratulations to James Freeman and the Outsource World team for organizing a great event at Dubai!