Welcome to Modern World!
Hello everyone,
I’m very happy to have you on my blog that will be a place for discussion about how our world is going to look like in the future.
I’ll try to cover as much topics as I can, and I’ll mainly focus on the world population, sustainability and culture.
I’d love to see you participating the discussion here!
Yaron
The big challenge of Outsourcing
It’s not a secret anymore. Some of the best brands in the world aren’t produced in the countries where their corporate HQ are.
Having the opportunity to reduce and cut the production costs by outsourcing it to sub-contractors in other countries such as Eastern Asia or Eastern Europeis a common and known fact nowadays.
Despite the fact it’s not that complicated to do it nowadays, we should think about a few factors when choosing the best place to produce, and the best workers to be relocated to that destination.
1. How to choose where to produce?
Many people would automatically say “China” as for the fact thatChinanowadays has an increasing specialization in what we call “the economy of scale” or mass production. However, when mentioningChina, we have to carefully examine the situation. Today, more and more college graduated people from all across mainlandChinaare not willing to take low salaries production jobs, and it’s getting more and more complicated to find workers for those roles, especially in urban areas. In accordance, the costs of production in China are higher and it’s more than possible that in 10-15 years from now cheap products won’t be “made in china” anymore. Therefore, new countries are discovered as “the next big thing” when we want to produce cheap low tech products such as lighters.Vietnam and Cambodiacan be good examples for that.
We also have to think about the distribution options we have. Many companies, for example like Nokia, prefer to produce in eastern Europe in order to deliver the European market their product s faster, and be able to send their quality assurance experts as quick as possible to the factories in Romania. 
2. Time Difference
Suppose we want to outsource a customer support center from theUStoIndia, will it be that easy? One of the most significant difficulties is the time difference.Indiais a “good choice” when it comes to language, as everyone are used to speak English. I tend to think – why don’t American companies outsource their services toJamaicawhere English is spoken, but unlike India, the time difference almost doesn’t exist and the workers can go to work in “normal hours”?
3. Relocation – who we send?
When opening a new branch\service or production center, companies send one or more of their employees to their target destination. It’s best to send someone who knows something about the local culture and if there’s no one like this, it’s better to provide an external expert to give the relocated employee an appropriate preparation before going. Cultural shock has never been a good point of start when companies try to enter a new market.
These are only part of the things we should take into consideration while planning to outsource the companies function into another country or send some of our employees on a relocation period. Those points I discussed may have a significant influence on the future of the business world. People who learn quicker to speak a new language may be more needed by corporations than ever. Companies who are able to identify new potential countries for outsourcing services may have a competitive advantage.
We shouldn’t forget, of course, the impact that outsourcing jobs has on the local economy. If you take theUSas an example or any other western country, we can see a moral decline especially among workers who spent many years in industries that have recently outsourced many of their functions abroad.
When you think about Outsourcing what is the biggest challenge in your opinion?
Pleasure? And Business! Tourism…
This time I would like to talk about a very important service industry, the biggest service industry that we sometimes forget.
What do you think of when you hear the word “Tourism”?
For many people it would just mean “being a tourist who travels somewhere” but for many others – 10.6 % of the global force, it’s a way of life, and a source of their income. They work as tourist agents, hotel managers, flight cabin crew and many other positions. It’s not a mistake – 1 out of 9 people in our world work in the Tourism industry and I’m one of them. 
Unlike the ancient times when only rich, adventurer and courageous people such as Columbus or Marco Polo could afford going touring and exploring the world, the industrial\technological revolution after world war 2 brought us to a new era when many people can just get on a plane, a train or a boat and spend some time in another country. In the last 20 years, with many new developing market arise such as India, China and Brasil, even more people can travel, and new destination are offered to the public all the time. Low cost flights shorten the distances, and shrink the prices.
Tourism has many advantages and positive side effects on the region where it’s developed: 1. We should never forget that tourism is the only industry that earns foreign exchange without exporting anything. 2. Wherever you have hotels and new attractions that are being built, you’ll have to have new roads and that leads to a better development of the local infrustructure.
The best example can be given about remote villages that are now having modern roads leading to them that can serve the local people as well.
3. The most important reason that brings many of us to go traveling: curiosity. In most of the cases we travel abroad in order to get a better understanding about a new culture and that can contribute to a very important side effect – the world peace. It may sound very optimistic and simple at first, but if you one country is able to develop its tourism industry and bring tourists from around the world (inbound tourism) when its economy is stable enough, local agents will be able to offer their local clients to go visiting other countries (outbound tourism) and by doing this, we encourage an exchange of cultures.
The world most important Tourism Organization , the UNWTO (affiliated with UN) celebrate the World Tourism day in September 27 every year since 1980.
This industry changes its face every day, and it’s very dynamic and unique. From old , awkward flight tickets made of paper we changed the whole process of booking to be an on-line process, fast and easy to use. Prices are fixed and changed online all the time in accordance with the supply and the demand.
But this industry has a very significant disatvantage: seasonality.
Many destinations can only be marketed on a seasonal base such as ski resorts, beach hotels, etc. Geopolitical situation , Weather dissasters and many other reasons may cause the “ups and downs” that can gravely affect the whole industry. Have a look about the concerns of the canadian tourism council for British Columbia region:
You also have to take into consideration that you work with people from different cultures, and that obliges you to dominate in at least 2-3 languages (appart of your mother tongue) if you want to be part of the industry. A cultural knowledge is a big must for those who work in the inbound tourism sector, and have to deal with forein tourists coming to their counry.
What do you think of Tourism as a way to boost the country’s economy?
How much do you know about living in the city?
Let’s start with what the researchers say.Jericho, according to many urban specialists, is the oldest city in the world, around 9000 years old, and it’s also the lowest town in the world.
Since those ancient times whenJerichowas built, the urbanization process became very intense almost everywhere around the world, and what made it even more intense were the times of the industrial revolution. Those years, many people around Europe moved to the cities, abandoning their villages in order to improve their level of life.
In 2008, over 100 years after, the number of people living in urban areas around the world was around 3.4 billion, hence, 50% of the world’s population.
Super cities like Tokyo in Japan with its 37 million habitants or Sao Paolo in Brazil with its 20 million people aren’t a rare thing anymore.The density in some urban areas around the world became unbearable due to air pollution, noise, crime and lack of public transportation. In this map you can see the percentage of population living in cities around the world in 2006:
This situation forces us to find new solutions for a better quality of life for the habitants of the big cities, and new economic models to help the process go forward, and help the economies of the cities at the same time.
The problem is even worse in less developed countries, where slams and poor areas arising around the city centers. These places are normally populated with people looking for more job opportunities that can’t be found outside.
A good example can be seen in this pictures taken from the “Garbage city” of Cairo, a very poor area where people live surrounded by tons of trash.
More photos can be found here.
However, we can’t forget that cities were established in order to make people’s life easier when we don’t need to grow our vegetables and fruits by ourselves, and could move into another economical model of living in the city instead of living in the rural areas.
Today, many urban economists use the terms “economies of scale” and “economies of agglomeration” in order to show how large cities that are comprised of many firms in the same area together, benefit more than small cities. When talking about this situation we can name advantages and disadvantages. It’s surely good for the workers, suppliers and firms altogether to have what they need near them, but on the other hand, congestion may lead to pollution and diseconomies, and that’s why people today start thinking about new and sustainable models for cities.
One phenomenon I’ve recently heard about, is the Sick Building Syndrome.
This phenomenon causes many people working in big buildings to have health problems, and worse quality of life as a result of it. It’s one of the side influences of multi-urbanization. Have a look in the video in order to learn more:
So what do we really look for? A sustainable city, where we can live better.
I want to give you a view to our future in this video:
I hope you enjoyed reading this post, and I want to thank you for beeing here. I’m waiting to see you here again soon – stay tuned!
Rapid musical change – where are we now?
Unlike the long musical periods in the past, such as the classical period (1750-1820) , since the 60′s of the last century, technology and globalization made the musical environment very fast changing on one hand, and highly diversified on the other. Talking about this subject which is very close to my heart I’m asking myself, what have we had so far? Let’s find out (and listen).
In the 60′s we could see bands such as the Beatles and singers like Elvis Presley bringing on a new trend of “Global music stars” that made millions of people worldwide to follow their culture and songs. Those days, the increasing use of TV and Vinyl records was in charge of spreading that Rock and Roll music that mainly came from the UK and the USA.
By the 60′s and the beginning of the 70′s we’ve been witnessed to a more experimental spirit in the Rock scene, mainly called “Progressive Rock” with an arising culture of free love, sex, drugs and Rock n’ Roll. The baby boomers generation took an advantage and created a whole new world, that came out of simple Rock n’ Roll melodies, towards more complicated combinations. 
The 70′s for itself are known to be the beginning of the “Diversified” period, putting an emphasize on the Bass lines, playing more Disco\Funky music with black roots.
Technological changes made the 80′s more “electronic oriented” when talking about music, using more Synthesizers, creating a whole new brand of pop coming mainly from European countries, even though you could be “Big In Japan” as well.
The 90′s brought back some Rock flavours from theUKand theUSA, as well as a huge progress in the Electronic Music world due to improved capabilities of electronic instruments.
Electronic music was developed a lot, and was divided into sub branches such as Trance, House, Dub, Break Bit, Hip Hop etc, according to the bits.
The 90′s were the decade when making music and spreading it became the easiest, and the Internet helped a lot to the industry. MTV channel added another dimension – the art of the Videoclip that became very developed that time.
However, since the beginning of the 2000′s we’ve been witnessed to a recession, especially caused by the reason that many people download songs instead of buying records, and that forced the companies to start thinking about a new business models.
This situation made the lives of new artists more complicated. On one hand they could publish themselves more easily, but they had more competition by others. The years 2000-2011 started a tendency of nostalgia , bringing back many old and known songs in a remix version, reducing creativity among artists, in my opinion.
TV shows like “American Idol” even ruin the industry more, by making your outfit and voice more important than your real talent, turning people into singing dolls instead of real artists.
On one hand, we can say that so far, since the beginning of the 2000 we don’t see any new kind of music developing so we can say “that’s the 2000″ but on the other hand, comparing the last 50 diversified years of the music industry with other periods in history, we can say that the human being has never seen such a varied musical range in such a short time.
What’s going to be the next trend?
One world, different clients, one firm and the same message for all
Think about the last time you went on a plane and went from one country to another.
Have you noticed that some commercial marks never “disappear” from your view?
Last time it happened to me I flew from NYC to Warsaw, Poland, and felt as if I landed at the same country.
All was quite familiar, the same beautiful “Ernest & Young” building, the same Sephora shop and the same Starbucks coffee branch. In this world that some of the big corporations have a stronger financial power than countries like Ireland or Hungary we really have to stop and ask ourselves how did this process start, what gives it the fuel to keep growing and where do we go from here. After all, these global corporations can affect the life of many of us with their presence at a certain country, and there is no doubt that they give a place to work for millions of people around the world.
At ancient times, firms didn’t expand their “territories” beyond the little villages or regions where they were. It was almost impossible to transport goods in a massive way. However, around medieval times when new lands were discovered by the greatest adventurers such as Columbus and Vasco de Gama, the greatest empires of that times started organizing the international trade routs with Africa, Asia and America.
In this pictures, for example, we can see how many lands were ruled by France in Africa in part of the time:
At that time, all the corporations were held by the governmental sectors and the countries were responsible directly for each procedure. The idea was to poses all natural resources in these remote lands and to control these markets.
After the First World War we’ve started seeing the change in the private sector thanks to the cars, airplanes and modern trains that started being developed at that time.
Corporations started to play in the national level, and it was a revolutionary step at those times especially in the biggest countries such as the USA.
The biggest international change took place after World War 2, when private corporations started to play internationally. At that time, we could see the very early stage taking place with organizations like Gatt and the International Monetary Fund that were established in order to help and encourage the international private trade.
Managers at those times couldn’t tell the difference between clients in different countries, and they used to market the same products everywhere an attitude called “extension”. They still had in mind that marketing inside their own countries is more important and valuable than marketing abroad.
I believe that during the 70′s and the 80′s of the last century we started seeing a tendency of corporations that started to be called the MNC’s: Multi National Corporations. They started to be seen everywhere. In Europe, in Japan, but mostly in the USA , and we can’t forget that the USSR didn’t take any part in the world trade organization.
There were a few new characteristics that differed the MNC’s from their “past generations:
- The ability to play in uncertain and complex international markets. 2. Acting in different countries with different regulations, culture and currency. 3. Common resources in all the world 4. Common vision and flexibility, the ability to convey workers and resources between all the countries in which the corporate is active.
There were also political changes in the world that pushed more the big corporations into acting globally. The European Community starting to be bigger and bigger, and Free Trade Areas started to be created around the world in several regions such as Mercosur in South America and Nafta in North America.
These corporations went through an attitude of adaptation, and understood that the needs in each country are different, and so do the clients.
After the USSR was dismantled in 1989, we started to see the presence of a new type of corporations in the world. McDonald’s is the best example for it in my opinion. Unlike the Multinational Corporations, the Global corporations try to identify similar market needs in many countries and market the same product under the same slogan in the entire world with minimum changes. Think about McDonald’s with their “I’m loving it” famous slogan all around the world.
Now, let’s start to analyze where do we go from here. I tend to believe that the tension that exist between the 2 main attitudes through international trade will define at the end the future form of it.
On one hand we have the regional model, like the EU, Mercosur and Asean that give more importance to start act inside the regional free trade areas, cancel customs and only then start to connect with other free trade areas.
Playing according to this attitude w’ell see more development in African and east European counries, for example, due to the fact that they are part of the EU or located next to it, and it’s easier to convey goods from there to the Eu. Same with the US and South America.
On the other hand, the global attitude try to globalize the whole world at once, through organizations like the WTO and the OECD that enables more transparency among its members without any connection to their geographic location. Here we’ll see countries like China, India and Brazil getting stronger, where mass production is still cheap.
Nowadays, we see different percentage for each attitude, and many international corporations combine between the two attitudes.
Nokia, for example, produces in Romania and China as well.
In your opinion , which attitude will be leading the world economy?
The power of a language
What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word language?
Is it something related with, knowledge? culture? emotion? or even power?
How important for you is to have this knowledge?
This time I’d like to share with you something I find quite essential for a better generation worldwide – Knowledge in foreign languages.
I personally see a language as a tool to understand something different, it can be a different culture or values that are reflected in the words and the idioms, different professional background, but in the end , this tool helps us with the most important thing – communicating with people like us.
Not so long ago, we had to go to courses, invest a lot of time in learning languages, and the most problematic thing was to preserve the knowledge we had, ‘coz travelling abroad wasn’t so easy as today.
Nowadays however, I personally think that a brand new world has been created in the recent time by the culture of the Social Media networks.
We can’t ignore the fact that Facebook is the 5th largest country on earth considering the number of its “citizens”. Other networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn take their potential segments too, and many people use all of them and others at the same time.
Can you imagine how many languages these people speak? What a diversity of potential linguistic knowledge are in them? Not to mention free or paid services and dictionaries that are here for us to use , all around the Web 2.0 .
Travellinguist is an example of something that YouTube invented to help travelers catch useful phrases in several languages for their trip easily and I personally liked the idea a lot. I will try to catch up some French before my trip to France next week.
The fact that we can easily learn and practice nowadays make us think of creative and useful solutions to maintain our knowledge.
On of the things I like most is doing “Linguistic Exchange” with a partner.
For example, if I’m Australian and I want to learn French I can look for a French native speaker that is willing to improve his English and we can meet (virtually or offline) and have a session. It means we’ll have our time to practice, let’s say one hour, and we’ll split it so that I can speak French for 30 minutes and he can speak English during the other 30 minutes. It’s fun, social, and it has many variations.
It can be done in small groups as well, and there is a lot of place for improvisation. I also know that it is done in different forms worldwide, some prefer games, some prefer going out to a pub and speak about their favorite beer, and so I came up with an idea to have a global community to share your adventures with us if you are a fan of linguistic exchange.
I invite you all to enter the Fan Page in Facebook here, and of course, invite all your friends. I’ll try to have an interesting dialogue there as well, and share with my tips. I wish to see as much tips as possible from everyone, and I hope we can create a significant global community in this field together.
Academic design of our future professions
Let me start this time with a little announcement , this post is going to be very relevant to people like me, that wake up in the morning (most of the week) and go to study in a university, college or any other form of an academic institution.
Seems like for the last 2-3 generations, at least in many western countries but also in other places, the process of life is quite automatic for the young people, and sooner or later we all find ourselves sitting in a class in an academic institution for a few years.
Now let see what way have we done so far….the year was 385 B.C approximately, and Plato’s philosophy school at a place called “Akademia” (a sanctuary for Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of the ancient city of Athens, Greece) was in fact, the root that made academies around the world grow, using the same name but changing completely the perception that was that time about high studies.
Moving towards the history, we come closer to our times to the 11th century, we see the first academies in Europe (mostly in Italy) emerging from a need for schools that the churches couldn’t provide, and developing side by side with them. That time studies were still a luxury that many people couldn’t afford, and the main role for the academy was to research, explore and get to new insights but not necessarily implementing them in the everyday life. 
The whole concept was developed more and more towards the 16th and the 17th centuries, and we could also see academies for art, music and more.
Looking at the modern terminology and how we see the academies around the world nowadays, I can see an enormous difference at how people percept it.
From a research institution we all moved towards a much practical attitude, due to the fact that studies for many people isn’t a luxury anymore, many countries subsidize the studies (especially in Europe) and this product is much more accessible from what used to be in the past.
The only question is on what should we put the emphasize more? Research like the “old school” system , or moving towards a more practical concept like many people want? (After all, we would all like to finish our studies with a defined career path)
The academic world has been changed so much, so that sometimes we can even find distance-learning programs that allows us to study from home using electronic materials throughout the internet, and come to class only for exams (Have a look at the futuristic building at MIT ).
I personally paid attention to an interesting process that is going on nowadays around the world and change the whole perception of the academy and its role.
On one hand, people still use the academy as a place to research and get to new insights like it used to be in the past. However I can name two main changes that occurred in the academic institutions around the world as a result of the new attitude towards the matter.
The first one is the interdisciplinary syllabus that students are required to study as a result of the thinking that by doing this our appetite for knowledge will just grow naturally. For example, if a certain student is majoring in Mathematics ,he is also required to take some courses about history and art just for general knowledge, and to encourage himself to be always interested in discovering new things as a way of life.
There are some organizations nowadays that commercialized the whole thing, like TedX that brings you into short sessions with many experts in order to expose you to new fields.
The second change is the practical attitude. There is no doubt that some of the faculties have always offered their students a defined career path in the end of their studies, such as Medicine and Law, but there were also many others that were not directing you to a specific job. Nowadays we see the market demand for new fields that are developing simultaneously at the academy and the outside world as well.
For example, wee see the business world with its fields leading us to new insights, using psychology theories for marketing, and economical theories in order to help firms creating a more sustainable economy.
This situation requires on one hand, having good researching skills, but also to live this world from the inside in order to see how it all gets into practices, and research the whole thing better afterwards. This is why in many places, students are required to participate in an internship one time or more during their studies, and here the academy becomes more “active” then it used to be in the past.
I personally think this situation is much more productive than it used to be in the past, but it’s not implemented in many places yet, unfortunately.
It leads to an interesting process where we see on one hand, needs from the market that are researched in the academies, and bring back the knowledge to the firms, governments and the market. This is an ideal synergy in my opinion, and a much more efficient usage of the academic resources we have.
We must not forget that a worldwide academic collaboration is a common thing nowadays and it allows each one of us to expand his knowledge by travelling to another country in order to acquire a unique knowledge there about his or her fields of interests.
So that’s how we get an academic design of our future professions, by a simple process of Market Needs -> Research -> Implementation (which we didn’t have in the past).
The only missing link I don’t see in this chain is a motivating reason by the universities for people to come and study those needed fields, it can be expanding the seats, scholarships and many more, and yet, that will be decided by each institution by the local rules.
I tend to believe that an academy that will work by these rules and be “active” by encouraging people to develop new fields all the time will benefit a lot, and prepare itself to be a leading place for the next leading generation in the fields it specializes.
Without this process, hence, putting an emphasize on the “old school” system, the academic structure will not be effective anymore, and I guess that it will not survive in the long range.
Let me finish with the picture of the biggest academic building in the world, the state university of Moscow:
Now Tell me, how would you like to see the academies in the future?
