Disruptive Leadership

Fareed Zakaria has been a favorite of mine for years. Editor of Newseek International since 2000, he seems to blast through media bias and provides an unusually independent and insightful interpretation of foreign policy and events.

He wrote a great assessment of America’s future position in the world in The Post-American World, and has a Sunday show called GPS on CNN, which is excellent.

He recently landed an exclusive interview with the premier of China, Wen Jiabao.   The Chinese premier has been dubbed “the people’s premier” by both domestic and foreign media due to his populist and “common man” approach.

Fareed asks very tough questions in a very tactful way (you’ll note the premier’s chin twitch a bit on Zakaria’s question on Tiananman Square, but Wen Jiabao’s answer is still thoughtful). Not surprisingly, this interview was nominated for an Emmy.  A must-see video.

… that China GDP grew 7.9% in the 2nd quarter of 2009 vs the previous year, and grew a staggering 16.5% compared to the previous quarter. Car sales rose by 48% and home purchases increased by 80%.   The Economist argues that this is due to both the government’s economic stimulus program as well as belt tightening measures the government put into place the year before:

“In 2007, concerns about overheating prompted the government to curb the flow of credit … This caused China’s economy to slow sharply even before the financial crisis.  Then, last November, the government turned the credit tap back on full.”

I met with the head of a large PC company in China last November and told me he believed China’s domestic market would not suffer as much from the financial crisis due to its government’s efforts.  Apparently he was right.  The government controls the banks and much of the economy and knows how to make their consumers buy (nothing get’s a Chinese consumer to part with their money more than “special” sales, rebates and discounts).

The danger is that they create unsustainable demand, potential bubbles in some segments (e.g. housing), and a repeat of what happened in the US mortgage industry  with too many “bad” loans.

“Did you know …” posts are short factoids or trends related to disruptive leadership (see the list of potential topics in the list of categories to the right.)

Recently, I came across an article in the NY Times about Jeff Bezos’ speech at a conference about disruptive business models.

I googled the article and found that Wired magazine hosted a conference called “Disruptive by Design,” the first conference that I know of focused specifically on disruptive business models.  They have a video library of all of the speakers.

Two stood out.  The first was Wired’s editor-in-chief, Christopher Anderson, who is more famously known as the author of Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.   He has introduced a new book: Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which was the primary topic of his speech. (You can get the e-book and audiobook free here.) He suggests that as things go from bricks to bits, and with the internet as a frictionless marketplace, you get perfect competition where prices fall to equal the marginal cost of a product.  Since the marginal cost of “bit-based” products (e.g. software) is nearly zero, he suggests that that they may eventually be free.  Using Google to search is free.  You can get free operating systems (e.g. Ubuntu).  And so on.  But he is not suggesting that this is a world of no profits. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Infodev and UNESCO have developed a new discussion and debate forum to explore the role of ICT in learning in developing countries. Called the Educational Technology Debate, it promotes a multi-week discussion over one month with two participants debating two sides of an argument, and additional user comments supporting or refuting either side. Check out the latest debate between myself and Walter Bender, CEO of Sugar Labs, the non-profit organization that provides the software for the XO laptop of One Laptop Per Child, and recently, the “Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry” which allows users to experience Sugar on any computer through a USB flash device.

I started the debate with a position that supports shared access computing as a more economically feasible approach than 1:1 computing (1 computer per 1 student), the premise being  that with very limited resources available to governments, it is better to get more students access part time to a shared computing device than it is better to significantly  fewer students access all the time.Over the next few weeks we will post additional responses and potentially evolve our position.

So join the debate and comment on the current discussion at 1:1 Saturations and Computer Labs: Can Their Benefits Bring a New Model?

For those of you who read the print version of BusinessWeek, you know that Jack and Susan Welch write a weekly column on the last page.  This week’s article is “Corporate Social Responsibility in a Recession” or his edgier online title “Giving in Unforgiving Times.”  It’s a good primer on corporate social responsibility (CSR), which they categorize into three types:

• Donating money, products or services.
• Community involvement
• CSR as a corporate strategy

… with a conclusion that essentially states the obvious: in tough times companies will likely have to cut back their CSR activities, just as they will have to streamline other areas of business.

[Read the rest of this entry...]