Guru Speak

One of the high¬lights that differenti¬ated the MIT pro¬gramme from other international execu¬tive programmes was an emphasis on change. In addition to change and its impact, the programme high¬lighted a few key strategies/operating models to enable businesses to sustain growth or at least survive the competition.

The topic is of interest to me, as change is an ongoing activity today. But what is change and why should we care?

Change means different things to different people and business entities. However, in a busi¬ness context, the most important examples of change have occurred in technology and its impact on the process of globali¬sation, changes that have been transforming commerce and competition from the 1990s to the present day.

Thomas Friedman sum¬marised the impact of these important changes on the 21st century. What he termed "the level play¬ing field" or "the flat world" is a metaphor he used to describe a condition where all competitors have an equal opportunity.

With technological advance¬ment and globalisation, Friedman stated that even the traditionally nontradable sector such as services could be traded or outsourced. He gave exam¬ples of the infor¬mationtechnol¬ogy city of Bangalore and other cities in India servicing callers from Europe and North America. What he tried to illustrate was that as technology and globalisation becomes more complete, today's competition is truly a 24 hours a day, seven days a week - "24/7" - phenom¬enon.

So, the world is flat, and then what! Why do we care? It is very simple; if you don't change or make improvements, somebody will come and eat your lunch. I really like this straightforward and yet compelling statement. As a company/business operat¬ing in Thailand, we may be phys¬ically far away from places like Bangalore or Mexico City. This false sense of security is, howev¬er, challenged by Friedman. Do you know that we soon must compete on the level playing field with competitors as far away as Peru? Most Thais don't even know the name of the Peruvian capital! And yet, most products and services from Peru will soon have free access to the Thai market under a freetrade agreement between the coun¬tries.

To provide an example closer to my industry, who would have ever thought that banking serv¬ices and activities could now be transacted 24/7 from anywhere in the world through Internet and mobile banking.

I hope that my examples above illustrate change and the fact that changes in both technology and globalisation are impacting us more than we typically com¬prehend.