Tag: South Africa

Next-Gen Leader

With the passing of Mandela, the world raises a legit question: will there be another one in the horizon of equal moral stature!

Yes and No.

This is why. Gen Next grows up digitally.

Search at their fingertips.

Conversation has long tail.

Everyone is well-informed by those tweets (Welcome Pres George H.W. Bush to Twitter). Tweet not Twist!

They invent services, fix things and carry none of the analog legacy. Instead, they identify more with sports and entertainment figures than WW II heroes like Churchill.

Attention is their new currency (Ashton and the hash tag). Wardrobe malfunction is the norm. Instead of avoiding disruption, they build it into the planning and implementing process.

Everyone thinks different including rival Samsung who opens factories in Vietnam instead of China. The older generation is looked at as having dementia (shut down the government?)

Morgan, Madoff and not Mandela? Rather, their hero is one who cooks his own meal and takes the bus to work. The new Pope (who just spoke up against CEO salaries which used to double-digit higher than workers, now triple-digit).

Next-gen leader is currently backpacking in Nepal and Napoly. picking up on the nuances of a globalized and inter-connected world while building and rebuilding homes torn by tornadoes. They play by the rules, but not rewarded for points just yet.

Burden with school debt, they decide to get our of the box altogether, postponing their parent’s white-shoe

career for a chance to experience the many shades of grey.

I hope they connect the dots, and not just cross the t’s.

My daughter dances with the number one hip-hop team in the US. Her group is composed of multi-ethnic LA (she was a few years old when the LA Riot broke).

To her, the conversation about race is just as passe as AOL ‘s “you’ve got mail”.

Kids in the Ukraine and Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt are all aspiring for real change, and not just a phone upgrade

To them, bigger is not better.

And the Beatles are still cool.

If a seventeen-year-old whose cancer death “Clouds”  can rally 5,000 people at the Mall of America for a choir, than we still have hope.

This time, it’s not going to be a towering figure as we had hoped for. It will be multi-tasking multi-racial and multi-platform leaders.

Every kid knows how to self-invent, self-promote and seek self-correction (at least the spell check). The Internet with its power growing by the minute will raise the bar.

Tech language will bind everyone together better than the Queen’s language.

And the new frontier is out there, in space and under the ocean. New leader looks for role models in influencers and thought leaders whom they trust, digitally.

You cannot hide but be the truth, the transparency  and the trust they are looking for.

Their votes will be crowd-sourced and cross-checked, not a replay of Florida in 2000

Next-Gen leader has emerged on this side of the digital screen. We just don’t know it, or refuse to recognize him, or more likely, her.

It’s that fast and furious, or common like our Inaugural poet. It’s staring in our faces, from the screen. Next-gen leader has to play both sides of digital divide, virtuality and reality, not both sides of the aisle.

Ladies and gentlemen, may we welcome our new leader, via podcast and broadcast, via tweets and texts and via whatever platform they will and surely will invent. We just did not know we would someday ride in EV and get stuff delivered by drones.

Stay healthy and stay tuned (because we are going to live very long life) to be witnesses to change.

New world requires new leader. Just that they will come in packages we might not like or are comfortable with. In MN, they voted for wrestler and SNL comedian. Someday, our leader might come with tattoos and ear rings in non-traditional places. You might wish it otherwise, but it’s the new reality brought to us by the virtual world we had created in our own image. For now, the Pope will do.

South-South emergence

A Vietnamese film director, a Japanese novelist, a Beatles title (which I read the Vietnamese translation bought in Hanoi)= Norwegian Wood.

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/film/norwegian-wood-film-a-labour-of-love

Indian telecom companies bought out Middle Eastern counterparts to target mobile market in Africa.

China beefs up its investment in construction and rare earth mining in S America, Australia and Africa.

These are examples of South-South trading and emerging opportunities.

BRIC by BRIC, these strategic moves will soon create a new Silk Road.

PBS and Christian Science Monitor are covering Cuba as it slowly reopened.

You saw the test scores (Math and Science from Shanghai).  Young people are asserting themselves and will go the distance, starting with online.

I am glad to see film makers encounter less barrier to entry. It started with “the Blair Witch project” and took off from there.

CNN dared to cover the first Iraq war live   Now, we get to see almost everything live via cable TV.

The rise of Pro-Ams i.e. wikipedia and wikileak.

(we forgot what’s like to see protests on the street, now that they have moved on-screen).

Like Hip Hop moves from street to stage, South-South movement will bring us  new radical ideas (such as mobile banking, low-cost car and peer-2-peer lending).

I can’t wait to see Norwegian Wood. To many who are underrepresented, having a story told on the big screen (outside of Hollywood) feels like the dragon-tatoo girl finally kicked the hornet’s nest (Sundance Festival). Remember those brick phones which once belonged only to Sunset boulevard producers (early adopters)? South-South is David’s turn at his sling shot. And this time, it started with trade and is spilling over to arts.

I heard it took a while for Haruki Murukami to agree to this mise-en-scene. Wonder who he would choose to bring 1Q84 to the big screen.

 

Happiness all around

If I were the man who sold my company for almost a Billion dollars, I would go off to Rock concerts around the world, instead of sitting down to write a book.

But Zappos former CEO thinks differently. He wants to go on a crusade. That crusade is to “deliver happiness”.

Moving people up the Maslow‘s scale, customers and employees alike.

Bezos saw the potential in Zappos.

So they deliver shoes with return/exchange No Question asked.

Nordstrom in a box.

Shoes and ties used to be made in Italy.

Now in China.

As the costs of production go down, competition goes up, companies like Zappos-now-Amazon, deliver the intangible “and the shoes is you”.

Verizon’s campaign “you rule the air” resonates “Empire of the Air” (back then, it refers to radio spectrum).

So, we are down to ads which speak of either You or I (Ipad, I phone).

What happens to He or She? or the Softer side of Sears?

BTW, the World Cup field invader was a T-shirt designer from Italy (Superman shirt).

Superman will be detained in South Africa long after this Sunday’s final is over (perhaps to help w/ super clean-up of the very field he invaded).

Poetic justice.

Back to Zappos. From top to toes, the only item that needs try on the most is shoes. Yet Zappos manages to turn this rule of thumb on its head: go ahead and put them on. Order online, we deliver and keep delivering until the shoes are fit.

Who would have thought of that (maybe besides Victoria Secret).

Imagine Playboy with similar campaign: “go ahead and view the video. And if you are not satisfied for any reason – 3D version included – you can return and money back guaranteed. Oh, must be 18 to order (but not to view).

So, modern-day success stories come back to old day success stories; keep the employees happy, in turn, keep the customers happy, which lead to happy stakeholders. In Zappos’ case, Sequoia Capital.

Starbucks plundered a bit until Howard Shultz is back at the helm (Apple and Dell both had similar epiphany).

What they should have done is “deliver happiness”, then sold to Amazon, then wrote a book which in turn is delivered by Amazon who bought the company in the first place. This time, it’s in both Kindle version and in print. Happiness in a box or in bits. China is taking a chapter from this playbook. It has to deal with workers’ demand.

Unhappy workers make for unhappy customers. Ford learned this early in his “Wheels for the world” dream. He paid people decent wage and turned them into customers.

Happiness all around.

Avez vous le vuvuzela?

Vietnamese soccer fans are eager to get their hands on the instrument.

It’s not surprising to see Vietnamese hot for soccer. I was there when Vietnam scored at the last-minute to win over Thailand.

But it is quite amusing to hear how vuvuzela is also making its way from South Africa to South Vietnam. Isn’t it noisy enough with millions of motor bikes honking all day long?

http://www.vnexpress.net/GL/Doi-song/Mua-sam/2010/06/3BA1D42E

Some cultures have an affinity to expressing themselves more audibly than others.

Hispanic events are always loud, so are the Filippino ones.

And Japanese events are the most quiet.

In the article, we also learned that in Hanoi, the demand for vuvuzela is lower than in HCMC .

The hotter the climate, the noisier the society.

The cold and rain tend to soothe and produce a calming effect.

The gods must be crazy in South Vietnam.

And World Cup fever is at its height. Blow the horn. Win or lose.

Meanwhile, in traffic, people also blow the horn to :

– announce their presence

– urge drivers in front to hurry

– celebrate soccer victory

In other words, honking  for all occasions.

In the US, if you honk, you will likely get a finger or trigger a road rage.

Intended and perceived message. Pure mis-communication play.

At least, the article brought up a good point: vuvuzela is not meant to be blown solo. It’s not like a sax which produces the urban lonely sound.

Vuvuzelas are meant to be blown in communal setting. In World Cup stadium. In South Africa. It’s so amazing how fast music (or sound) and sports can bring people together.

So does a simple instrument  (from the Roman Empire to today’s Arlington Memorial).  Wait until someone tries to blow it in Sapa or Dalak where nature will join in with its own hollowing echo, reverberate the (sounding) circle of life (Disney-esque) e.g. bushman and cave man, mountain man and city man, factory man and fashion man, hobo and homo: all free men.

Humanity will get its say. It just takes time. Do unto others what you would want done. What comes around comes around. I just hear the sound of one hand clapping.

What’s that sound. Everybody is going round.