Media, Technology and Society

Praise for "Growing Global Leaders: The 'Hollowing Out' Solution"

I just read with great enthusiasm an article by Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, and Gordon Nixon, President and CEO, Royal Bank of Canada.

Basically, the article argues that the years 1990-2030 will involve a fundamental change in corporate structure in the world, from a world of many industrial centres and thousands of large corporations, to a world where a few major regions (and correspondingly countries) dominate activity in a particular industrial sector. Think Microsoft's domination of operating systems, or Hollywood's domination of movies. The authors refer to this phenomenon as "spikiness". The nations that put in place effective policies to make sure their nations companies are the ones that house "spiky" clusters of powerful companies are the ones with a more secure, safe future. The whole concern with "hollowing out" of national industries by larger international buyers and conglomerates is basically the symptom of this larger economic reorganization - a kind of second industrial revolution. The authors argue that the companies that positioned themselves well to take advantage of, and be leaders in the first industrial revolution dominated the global economy for the next century, e.g. Britain's succesful practice of the industrial revolution between 1780-1820 enabled it to be a world power for most of the next century. Similarly, nations that attract, retain and nuture clusters of spiky industries will be the nations whose companies acquire other companies, rather than the other way around. The authors also make some excellent arguments about tax policy and how poorly Canada's government is equipped to nurture strong, Canadian companies:

"Since 2003, seven companies, a full 15% of our precious stock of companies ceased to be Canadian companies and this trend may be accelerating. One company exited the list in a perfectly happy way - Placer Dome was acquired by Barrick, another Canadian company on the list. However, six were acquired by foreign firms, half ow hich (ATI, Domtar, and Masonite) were firmst hat built a global position between 1985 and 2003. that is a lot of hard Canadian work to get taken out by a foreign investor".

The authors then expose the inadequacy of current left/right thinking on tax. I just LOVE this paragraph:

"There is a very interesting relationship between corporate taxation strategy and socialist background: the more socialist the ethos of the country, the more the country has figured out how to be intelligent about corporate income taxation. In addition to Scandinavia clocking in at 19.6% the four OECD countries that were formerly Communist-controlled average a mere 14.2%. It is ironic indeed thatthe socialists are more pragmatic rather than ideological about business taxation. Canadian policy falls prey to an important categorical fallacy in respect to corporate taxation. Our logic of fairness holds that poor people make little income and should pay little tax; middle class people make moderate income and should pay moderate taxes; rich people earn lots of income and should pay high taxes; and corporations earn huge income and should pay really high taxes. But corporations are a different category altoghether; they aren't like rich people only richer. They are legal constructions whose purpose in the modern economy is to invest, innovate and create high-paying jobs. Taxing them highly, as all the socialists have figured out, works against them investing, innovating and creating high-paying jobs. As the socialists have figured out, the way to tax corporate activity is to tax at a personal level the earnings that rich people collect from the ownership of corporations....the question is not lower taxation overrall; that is not the fundamental problem. The question is not left versus right; that is a red herring. The question is how to structure taxation so that corporations have the best chance of becoming global leaders and well-to-do Canadian individuals pay their fair share of the overral tax burden".

A question I have for critics of Canadian tax policy, who argue Corporate taxes should be raised (Jack Layton?), would be whether those critics would be happier with non-Canadian corporations paying higher tax down the road? Small Canadian corporations with often competitiveness-handicapping regulatory restrictions face an uphill battle on the global scene; tax them and they will fall, only to give way to larger conglomerates that can use their market power to balance out the affect of an adverse business tax environment.

So I joined the Liberal Party...

My joining this party couldn't have happened at a better time. Stephane Dion is nowhere in the polls (and by nowhere, I mean even with the Conservatives, which is more a statement about the conservatives than anything else), the liberal party is, from its website, content to behave as any stereotypical opposition party does, lambasting the government for 'propaganda,' lies and doing its utmost to muster some popular outrage at the governments policies. Maybe it succeeds at times, but this is not a party at the peak of its power by any means. I'm sorry, but where is the leadership of Stephane Dion? I can't help but think that Ignatieff might have been a better pick. Atleast he might muster a newsbyte occasionally. Anyways, enough loathing! What irritates me about the opposition right now is that they lack imagination. They aren't an inspiring alternative. In fact, they aren't articulating visionary, positive, constructive policy ideas of their own. This is a difficult task for any political opposition. Its just that there is so little good to be gained by reflexively blasting any and all policies of the government. It doesn't help that I support the mission in Afghanistan, and more than a few of Mr. Harper's policies. Granted, he scrapped federal daycare, the aboriginal accord and a number of under-appreciated Martinite achievements, but he's not nearly the bogeyman Liberals made him out to be.

So why have I joined the party? To make a difference of course! I strongly believe in the Liberal party - when it is led by inspired leadership. Perhaps I am packing on more responsibilities and obligations than I can possibly fulfill, but Ghandi did say you need to be the change you wish to see in the world. The liberal party may blow, but change can only come from within.

Sub-Prime Panic

The Dow Jones industrial average declined 243 points (1.97%) today - the largest decline since Feb 27th (albeit not the longest span of time ever). In any case, this is one nice peice of bad news since the Chinese stock market rattled global investors last week. A consensus among analysts, and the business press (atleast the Economist anyhow) seems to be that most firms and OECD nations economic outlook is modest for 2007 (compared to 2006's robust growth rates).

Nonetheless, some firms are going to be negatively affected by increasing receivables management problems because of the subprime sector. As the Wall Street Journal noted "tax- preparation giant H&R Block Inc. said it wouldn't be able to file its third-quarter financial statement on time, citing its need to account for "rapidly declining loan values" at its subprime-lending subsidiary." From an accounting perspective, this must be a nightmare indeed. Proper valuation and receivables expectations are difficult for many firms. How risky are risky loans? What percentage of bad debt loss should be calculated in advance? These types of calculations are notoriously vulnerable to accountants inability to find accurate crystal balls, and therefore anticipate future economic events which may drastically affect their expectations.

That said, it may well be that many firms are not following the conservatism accounting principle as much as they should if they are having to vigorously downgrade receivables expectations for a loan sector that is, by definition, at higher risk of default. Some firms though, are bullish on this kind of news. With more risk-averse firms fleeing the market, all the better to seize the opportunity to buy up sub-prime market share at cheap prices and huge upside potential.

I Just Widgetized My Blog

Isn't it ridiculous how insane that sounds? I just widgetized my blog? Five years ago, that would have made absolutely no sense. Now, somehow, perhaps...it does. It might help if I actually knew what widgetizing is. Sometimes I just sign up for stuff that I have less than a clue about, and will find out about later. That is what I plan to do with this widgetbox stuff. We'll see... I think its a tool app for your blog, or a different way of displaying blogs in different formats that are customized for user... pretty nifty. Sort of like RSS but perhaps better. Learn more about widgetization...

Microsoft Vista Proves PC Guy Right

And yes I do read C++ GUI books for fun. Come on, everybody knows PC guy just needs to put on a pair of cool glasses and a slimmer suit and he's as cool as they come...

In other words, although Apple has succeeded in creating a somewhat cultish following, and may have some clever marketing and excellent industrial design in its favour - Microsoft's latest OS raises the bar. I've been using Vista AND a PC for just a few weeks now, but its been a real pleasure. In fact, I can do everything! Graphics, Networking, Movies, Games, Internet and all in great more oh la la!

Although some initial reviewers have complained about Vista's apetite for system resources, I've found that once the system completes its indexing (a feature where the OS catalogues repititive processing requirements in order to run more efficiently once this process is complete), it runs as fast as XP - even with all the fancy graphics enabled.

Speaking of graphics, the OS is more pleasing to use and much more productivity-enabling than Mac OS X, which I've used at work for 2 years. I'll admit, at first I was super-impressed by OS X - especially the dock with the magnification feature and the way program windows morph away when you close them...cool! Mac OS X is sumptuous graphically, and has many strengths that overcome its mostly minor deficiencies. That said, I've been tremendously annoyed by OS X limitations such as the inability to create folders with folders, limited right-clicking functionality (e.g. you can't create, name and work with files & directories within menu dialog boxes). Much of this is probably due to the fact that I've become accustomed to working this way in XP - but its just more efficient no? I've also found the Mac OS X 'search' function to be dysfunctional - its very difficult to search just within a particular directory. Of course, XP was fairly poor in this respect as well.

To return to Vista, I have to say that the billions invested and tremendous testing Microsoft conducted before shipping the new system have paid off. The much-publicized flippy-window thingy - being able to graphically flip through all available open windows is a huge advantage for people who love to keep a million windows open at once (e.g. me).

I also like the transparency features on all the windows menu bar areas. This allows a background wallpaper change to automatically result in appropriately coloured menus.

Many of the great features of Vista become apparent to former users of XP when they attempt to configure a network, modify device properties in the control panel or customize user permissions (especially relevant for Vista Business). Whereas the Business version of XP felt like Windows 2000/NT4 papered over with some nice GUI features to accomodate less sophisticated users, it was a frustrating experience in many ways because there were often two administrative or control panel areas - one that was less powerful, but more attractive graphically, and the 'real' administrative and control settings area - where administrative users could view hidden systems user settings and so forth that weren't viewable in the user-friendly menus.

In Vista, this whole configuration has been cleared up. There is a single set of menus and control areas for each major process area (permissions, network options, etc) with a well integrated set of user-friendly, plug and play, and auto-detection, troubleshooting features built in. The difficult area for any OS developer is to attempt to accomodate users of varying levels of technical skill and knowledge. It is important to have the user friendly options, and yet make administrative control easily accessible and consistent for the more powerful user. I believe Vista is a tremendous improvement in this respect. Working with network options, diagnostics, and user permissions areas is a much more streamlined affair in Vista as opposed to XP.

All in all, I want to get out this review to counter some of the negative press about Vista. Many in the Mac/cult community simply live to criticize Microsoft, while for others there is a pervasive sense that Microsoft is incapable of issuing a new operating system without having it plagued by technical errors and instability for the first 2 years of its life. I'm telling you folks, this isn't the case with Vista. While it is possible that I may have to eat my words tomorrow when my system crashes and a random blue screen of death pops up, I don't think this will happen.

Synchronizing Palm Desktop & Online Calendering

Like many people in world, its an effort to stay organized, and to get all the tech gadgets you own - desktop/laptops, cell-phones, pda's all supporting this common objective. Right now, I've been using Palm Desktop (which keeps my desktop and palm tx speaking the same language, and synchronized more or less very well). However, this system falls short of the major feature of "calendaring" systems - allowing more than one individual to synchronize schedules together (e.g. there are many systems businesses use that allow this - Google Calendar, CorporateTime, etc).

Even, a (by all indications) popular (and free) service like Google Calendar is great by itself - but how can you integrate it with your pda? Since I use and am very happy using Palm Desktop (the time management & calendaring system that comes standard with palm pda's), I want to synchronize these two systems.

Techno-blogger Ah Knight has a set of instructions which I've followed to the T and the system works very well:

1. assume that you already have google calendar account
2. register an Airset account and create a new group
3. one group for one calendar ( in google calendar we can have multiple calendar )
4. select the new created group , choose Calendar -> Subscribe to a Calendar, enter your ical address of your google calendar, starting from now it will fetch the changes that you add through google calendar
5. Download the Airset Desktop Syn and follow the instruction to syn Airset calendar to desktop palm application
6. repeat the same thing for other calendar, now your palm will have all the appointment that you mark on google calendar

Now If I could just synchronize my contacts list with my cell-phone I'd be set...

Blogging Hiatus Until Mid-December Atleast...

Finishing up Managerial Economics and Management Information Systems at Segal, and since there are finals and term papers due, I'll be out of commission until December 15th atleast. Happy holidays everyone :)

Hero Stabbed in the Back

NIGERIA - Canadian Olympic Gold Medalist Daniel Igali was stabbed in the back three times by burglers in his home in the city of Yenagoa.

Igali said in a telephone interview Wednesday night that he was set upon in his home by four robbers in the city of Yenagoa. They stabbed him three times in the back and made off with cash, laptops and phones.

''I think they stabbed me because they wanted me to give them everything,'' Igali said. ''It was a bad experience.

''I don't have any respect for people from the underworld who would come into your house and taken everything you've collected over the years.'' Story from Canada.com

It is unbelievable that this could happen to Daniel Igali of all people. Mr. Igali is a trully incredible individual, who has perservered through an impoverished childhood, a complete lack of facilities in his hometown of Eniwari, and yet has achieved his goal of becoming an elite wrestler - achieving the highest Olympic Honour. In his spare time, he has founded a school for children in Eniwari, begun studies for a Masters degree in Crimonology at Simon Fraser University, has run for political office in BC, and continues to attract huge audiences as a motivational speaker.

"Daniel is the President of the Igali Foundation Inc., a Not-For-Profit foundation that caters to the needs of underprivileged children all over the world. Daniel spends a considerable amount of time on the "Keep Sweating Tour", where he speaks to school kids, different groups and corporations about the benefits of healthy living, making right choices, and of being good neighbors to each other."

What is so impressive about Mr. Igali is that after have achieved greatness, he has not forgotten his roots, nor rejected his capacity to give back to communities which are in such dire need of investment in basic infrastructure - such as schools and hospitals.

On the subject of charity, volunteerism and philanthropy,  it is an unfortunate truism that 80% of these contributions are made by 20% of the population. In a world where "being famous" eclipses the concept of living a life of 'meaning,' Igali is an inspiration.

US Democrats Win Control of Congress

Six years of a Republican majority in the house of representatives and senate came to an end today. George Bush will somehow have to manage a concilliatory tone when he calls expected Democratic speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi for a congratulatory call in the next couple of days. While news of whether the senate will pass into Democratic hands is uncertain at present, the implications of a republican president and a democratic congress hold several possibilities.

As some CNN commentators suggested, the results of this midterm election may portend a deadlocked, ineffective next two years, defined by a congress which challenges presidential power in ways Mr. Bush has never before experienced, and a president who can use his veto power to thwart congressional actions.

Others noted the possibility that Mr. Bush and the Pelosi-led house will strike a centrist balance, aiming to pass moderate legislation and actions which may satisfy an empowered alliance of moderate republicans and conservative democrats.

As far as policy on the Iraq war - the key issue in this election - Mr. Bush is not likely to change the course. He has nothing to gain politically from a pullout, and little to lose.

Attention now turns to the broader implications of this election. Is this result nothing more than a vote against the Republicans, as opposed to a decision actively in favour of the Democratic party's agenda? Most analysts suggest that, at this point, this is a referendum against the status quo, and the extent to which the GOP represents that unhappy set of policies.

Nonetheless, the disquiting last-minute surge in Republican support, as well as the nail-biting insecurity among Democrats over their ability to obtain a victory - despite an extraordinarily favourable political environment - suggests that popular support for the Democrats may not necessarily accompany this victory. In fact, it may simply allow a temporarily weakened Republican party to re-energize while they prepare to vigorously compete for the 2008 presidential campaign.

To succeed long term, the Democrats must turn their image around with this victory, and establish a reputation for competence, effective centrist social and economic policies coupled with rigorous defence of their constituent's interests. Alternately, the greater prominence their party has achieved holds the risk of highlighting a continuation of their historically lacking party organization and inability to inspire mainstream voters.

Of Two Dire Scientific Reports: Fish Stocks and Global Warming

Sometimes its better for your sense of optimism about the world to just not listen to the news. However, it is generally unavoidable if you're at all out and about these days. Its times like these that it becomes necessary to do your own small part, and just wonder at the plight of humanity at the present time.

Will we survive into the next century? What untold millions or billions will sufffer because of our lack of foresight now?

In economic terms, how can we stop individual nations from engaging in short-term economic self-benefit at the expense of long-term catastrophies? If the costs are not internalized, economically inefficient markets continue to exist (in industries, vehicles, etc, that pollute at a negative level of net social benefit, and as well, within fishing operations that cumulatively lower net social welfare). In short, how can externalities be countered on a global scale?

I am not altogether pesssimistic about the future. I think things will get worse before they get better, and we will pay a higher price for our slow reaction to disastrous courses of action, but the capacity for change has not yet developed a critical momentum. As the consequences (costs) of the status quo become ever-closer, the incentives to change become much more potent.