cool global BIZ

The New Global Media & the Renaissance Journalism Center

SAN FRANCISCO, California, U.S.A. -- With digital apartheid growing by the gigabyte, it's good to see a soulful media program that reaches the masses who lack the cash or connections to shmooze at clubby business and tech confabs.  Spent last Friday at the "Seizing the Moment" multimedia training put on by San Francisco State University's Renaissance Journalism Center, a three-year-old entity that aims to provide training and research on new business and media models for diverse communities, including non-profits and ethnic groups.  No caste system here -- all were welcome at U.S. $25 each, in the true populist spirit of non-profit altruism.

 

The Renaissance Journalism Center is run by Jon Funabiki, a former Ford Foundation deputy director of media and San Diego, California-based journalist who once organized a group of Pacific Rim reporters called "The Rim Rats," and Whitney Wilcox, former deputy director of a grant-making program called New Routes to Community Health.  Co-founded with ZeroDivide, the center gets funding from ZeroDivide, the Ford Foundation and the McCormick Foundation.  You can skim the highlights from some of the workshops here, and check out resources and handouts here.  I especially enjoyed:

 

• "Launching a Web Site on a Shoestring Budget" by AllVoices.com co-founder Erik Sundelof and designer Brad Eller, whose handout on Web design can be found here.  Ah, to be a Web wizard.

• "Building Your Brand With Social Media" by writer/editor Kwan Booth and tech consultant Sarah Dopp.  Kwan twitters that he played Vanna White to Sarah's Pat Sajak.

• "Making Twitter Work for You & Your Organization" by Marc Smolowitz, an Academy Award-nominated producer and media & tech consultant.  Marc flies soon to Japan to work on his documentary Power of Two, filing blog posts on his iPhone on the Dopplr.com travel-planning site.

 

Unfortunately missed these workshops here, but you can read about "Tools to Build an Engaged Online Community" by social media expert and journalist J.D. Lasica and Web strategy consultant Susan Mernit, and Mernit's "Using Social Media for Social Action: Case Study of the Knight News Challenge, which shows how the program created buzz and boosted Web site visitors by 100 percent.  The conference also featured a Spanish-language workshop track for journalists and other media and non-profit professionals.

 

Helpful, hands-on content.  Good diversity in speakers and participants, from media managers to low-income students.  Not the pseudo-liberal lip service given to diversity, but the real thing, a warm embracing global vibe, like those old Coca-Cola commercials.  Congrats to the center and its supporters.  A half-century ago, social visionaries of the old San Francisco/Berkeley scene foresaw the future long before anyone else.  Can you dig it?  Their cultural views and lifestyles replicated around the U.S.A. and the world, and mainstream society has benefited in many ways.  Now, step by step, new generations are paying it forward in 2009 A.D.  With the help of San Francisco State and the Renaissance Journalism Center, let's hope the new global media will be run by digerati of all hues, not an elitist few.

 

Above, "Coke Side of Life: Coca-Cola Art Remix"  under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.  A very cool example of the global mash-up of art, culture and commerce.  Also follow the link to the Coca-Cola Art Gallery's photostream on flickr.com.

 

Entrepreneurship & the Global Economy: One American Family's Tale

 

Summer is festival time for the Japanese and Japanese Americans, who honor their ancestors with prayers and folk dances, with taiko drumming and rice dishes called o-bento.  This blog entry from last winter was my very first, and I'm re-posting it in honor of my late parents' anniversary and my family's ancestors.  It's a reminder of what is most important in life, beyond the next quarterly earnings release.

 

 

The quest to better one's life is universal.  Leaving rice farms and their loved ones in Meiji era Japan, my grandparents boarded ships to the U.S. before the first Ford Model Ts rolled off the assembly line.  Like the legendary industrialist  Henry Ford   (Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan), Japanese American entrepreneurs had business in their blood, and blood in their business.  My grandfathers and grandmothers raised a flock of kids, grew fruits and vegetables on leased land, ran a store near “Little Tokyo” (here) in downtown Los Angeles.  Despite legal barriers and brutal discrimination, Japanese Americans rose in the agricultural and florist industries, and launched restaurants, metal shops, tofu factories, commercial fishing firms and other small businesses.

 

Their saga reflects the spirit and work ethos of all U.S. immigrants and their kin, from 19th-century Irish laborers to 21st-century India-born entrepreneurs.  In our modern U.S. economy, immigrant-owned startups churned out $52 billion in sales in 2005, according to research (here) by Vivek Wadhwa, (here) Ben Rissing (here) and Gary Gereffi (here) at Duke   University (here) and AnnaLee Saxenian (here) at the University of California at Berkeley.  For old-schoolers who like digging through voluminous yet enriching history, my late uncle Masakazu Iwata, a UCLA-educated scholar and Biola University dean, wrote about Japanese American farmers in the two-volume Planted in Good Soil: A History of Issei in United States Agriculture (Peter Lang Publishing, 1992). (here)

 

 

("Evacuees of Japanese Ancestry Attending Memorial Day Services at Manzanar, California," May 1942, by the U.S. War Relocation Authority, courtesy of the National Archives.)

 

My folks left their store and farm work when World War II struck.  How do you value that economic loss?  While uncles served honorably in the U.S. Army, 19 family members -- nearly all U.S. citizens -- were bussed to the Manzanar military internment camp (here) in the high desert of California.  On work leaves from camp, my late father toiled in potato and sugar beet fields in Idaho and Oregon, and in the produce market in Chicago.  My late mother, a speedy typist, whipped out letters as a secretary for the U.S. War Relocation Authority.  Aunts contributed to the war economy by making camouflage nets.  How do you measure that productivity?  They kept on.  They persevered.  Seven times down, eight times up, goes the old Japanese folk saying.

 

After the war, Japanese Americans scattered throughout the Western U.S. I grew up in South-Central Los Angeles, a cultural fusion over the decades of middle-class European Americans, black migrants from the South and Latino immigrants.  The once-thriving Japanese American enclave in the Crenshaw district –with its down-home sushi joints, summer festivals and obon folk dances (See a similar obon dance in ObamaLand, Hawaii) -- was a cultural sanctuary and an economic hamlet for Japanese American small businesses.  But it died long ago, as my generation found the suburbs, middle-class jobs and interracial marital bliss.  The early waves of Japanese immigrants and their entrepreneurial drive symbolize the vast ethnic and demographic forces growing stronger by the day in the U.S.  Those same forces are cascading worldwide, transforming cities, nations, the economy.  The local tales and global story are playing out on millions of like stages.

 

(Crenshaw Square from ww.LAist.com.)

 

 

In a rite of passage, I spent part of my early career tracing the family arc, hounding my parents for shards of their personal histories.  Spring pilgrimages to the windswept Manzanar site.  A trek to Japan, to Buddhist temples and family farms in the green hills of Wakayama and Okayama.   Closure came with President Reagan signing the historic redress bill in 1988 that gave each interned Japanese American $20,000 for what legal scholars call the greatest civil rights violation of U.S. citizens in our nation's history.  A generation of economic dreams deferred, though not killed.  During pilgrimages, Grandma always brought cool water to the Manzanar cemetery.  The spirits are thirsty, she told my aunt.  Beyond the politics of identity, my soul-searching and dusty boxes of documents honored the ghosts and their legacies.  It was time to move on.

 

- Edward Iwata

(Cemetery monument at Manzanar military internment camp in California's Mojave Desert.  Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.)

 

Hot, Hot, Hot: Brazil and IBM Join Forces on Global Innovation and Startups

Claudia Fan Munce, managing director of IBM Venture Capital Group, speaking with CoolGlobalBiz.com at the Technology Symposium conference at Stanford University earlier this year.

 

IBM is stepping up its innovation push in Brazil, launching new initiatives today to grow Brazilian startups in technology, energy and healthcare.  IBM will team with FINEP (Brazilian Innovation Finance Agency), ABVCAP (Brazilian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association), Endeavor (Organization for Entrepreneurship Support in Brazil), venture capital firm DFJ FIR Capital and venture firm Rio Bravo.

 

From IBM's news release, FINEP official Renato Marques said: "By working with IBM, Brazilian startups will be better prepared to scale their businesses and position themselves to attract venture funding."  Marcus Regueira, founder of the DFJ FIR venture firm in Brazil, said: "We are always looking to expand our ecosystem of portfolio companies.  Businesses that are already in partnership with IBM bring credibility to the business plans and can result in interesting opportunities."  Claudia Fan Munce, managing director of IBM Venture Capital Group, added:  "Everyone wins. IBM expands its network of business partners, while partners increase their client portfolio and can gain global reach. "

 

IBM announced the new moves at its technology forum at the Sao Paulo IBM Innovation Center, one of 43 IBM centers in 30 countries that offer training, technology and consulting to entrepreneurs and academics.  Brazil's middle-class economy and workforce continue to grow despite the global downturn, and Brazil and Latin America will be one of the world's hottest investment regions this year.  According to the ABVCAP, investors poured $28 billion of venture capital and private-equity money into Brazil in 2008.

 

Check out today's news stories . . . CoolGlobalBiz.com blog posts earlier this year on Brazil's innovation scene . . . and a USA Today profile of venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which partners with DFJ FIR in Brazil . . . Also see a CoolGlobalBiz.com interview with Cate Ambrose, executive director of the Latin American Venture Capital Association, at an ABVCAP conference in Sao Paulo last spring:

 

• BusinessWeek, "IBM Bets on Brazil Innovation"

• Wall Street Journal, "IBM Drills into Brazil's Tech Scene"

• CoolGlobalBiz.com, "A Visit to Hoplon Infotainment",  "Technology and Innovation in Cross-Cultural Brazil," and "Claudia Fan Munce, IBM Corporate Venture Capital Group"

• USA Today, "Venture Capital Firm Transforms Global Startups"

 

The Global Economy Seems To Be, Appears To Be, May Be Recovering!

DSC00015 by otzberg, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.

While economists crunch their data, us Joe Blows in the trenches look for sure anecdotal signs of downturns and upturns.  The way I figure it, we've got a 50/50 shot, dead-on or dead-wrong.  Long before recessions become official, we see the half-empty restaurants, the lighter rush-hour traffic, the vacant offices and rentals.  Well before the bubble bursts, we hear cab drivers and grocery clerks talking hot investments.  And just before financial Armageddon smotes us, we've already throttled back our spending, stocking up at Costco and planning our staycations.

 

And when the economy is ready to rock again?  The Joe Blows of the world see upbeat signs weeks before the Fed.  The local dentist's office and hair salon get busier.  Consumers fill shopping centers, pizza joints and Chinese restaurants.  Unemployment levels off, and more neighborhood homes go on sale.  Credit-card limits ease a bit.  A whole lot of trucks filled with gravel rumble up and down the highway.  The media run to the online Thesaurus, finding new ways to say "glimmers of hope."  In short, some of the gloom from earlier this year clearly has lifted.  Unscientific for sure, but I'll go with my prognosis.

 

Last year, when the financial meltdown began, the onslaught of media stories added to the fright show.  But now that the global economy (in some countries, by some measures, by some accounts) seems to be bouncing back (somewhat, at least for now, according to some analysts), please give journalists and bloggers credit for spreading a wee bit of Happy Albeit Skeptical News:

 

• Economist, "An Astonishing Rebound."

• BusinessWeek, "The Case for Optimism" and "Random Reasons to be Cheerful."

• BrandWeek, "Hispanic Consumers: A Cure for Recession Blues?"

• RGE Global EconoMonitor, "Are There Bright Spots Amid the Global Recession?"

• ABC News, "Recession Rebound?"

• Reuters, "More Treasury Investors Bullish . . . . "

In Which a Homeboy Finds Global Business Diversity in ObamaLand, Or Toward a Color-Blind Economy

 

 "Chicago - View from the Hancock Center Skywalk" by Roncaglia, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.

 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, U.S.A. -- While U.S.-based pundits and politicans debate diversity hiring and racial profiling, the corporate and small-business world is speeding toward global business diversity beyond skin color, beyond gender.  Driven by overseas growth, an immigrant workforce and millions of multi-ethnic consumers, the companies are dramatically transforming the U.S. and global economies.  And no Supreme Court rulings will slow this juggernaut.

 

To find such thriving diversity, I flew not to Dubai or Shanghai, but to the commercial crossroads of ObamaLand.  This blue-collar kid from South-Central L.A. digs this town, its urban grit and big-city soul.  You can take the homeboy out of the ‘hood, but you can’t take the ‘hood out of the boy.  Hardworking entrepreneurs everywhere:  The down-home Latino shopkeepers near Oprah's upscale studio.  The Southside restaurant owner with the heavenly barbecue links.  The muckraking Japanese journalist/media exec fighting power-brokers with his pen.  The marketing director-turned-fishing guide who helped me land huge salmon in Lake Michigan.  It's easy to sing the praises of the world's rising multicultural economy in the global city of Chicago.   ("Los Comales is Open" by Senor Codo, under Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

Even bigger signs of the cross-cultural economy could be found at the packed Marriott hotel on The Magnificent Mile, a short walk from Grant Park where Barack Obama gave his victory speech last fall.  The Conference Board, the business-and-research nonprofit, was hosting a confab on global corporate diversity that showcased diversity executives and gurus from all time zones.  And those diversity chiefs confirmed that many companies -- including Terex, PepsiCo, Microsoft, Royal Dutch Shell, Campbell, Procter & Gamble and others -- are raising their games and embracing global-style diversity at a higher level than ever before.  ("Chicago" by Suvarn, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

Why?  Because a confluence of forces is shaping a multicultural economy unlike any the world has seen.  A multitude of middle-class consumers – immigrants, women, minorities, gays and lesbians, the mature and elderly – boast trillions of dollars in spending power, and they’re creating a global bazaar that never closes.  Futurist John Naisbitt (photo right), author of the Megatrends bestsellers, and other experts predict that cross-border industries will rise to power and soon transcend the influence of governments.  Developing nations and cities continue to grow quickly, and billions of people desperately need decent housing, water, energy, food, jobs.  In the financial markets, $140 trillion in capital was racing around the world before the recession, and the global downturn won’t chill that money forever.  In a post-apartheid world, caste-free capital will seek its greatest return.

 

No one knows this better than blue-chip businesses, often at the vanguard of cultural change in their pursuit of profits.  As the world economy evolves, so does their definition of multiculturalism.  Not mired in a generation-old paradigm of race relations, the most visionary global companies are embracing Global Diversity 2.0.  Rather than charge into foreign lands like corporate conquerors, they're forging real cross-border partnerships and creating true cross-cultural teams.  They're hiring diverse talent from a global immigration workforce that's 3 billion-strong.  They’re developing leading-edge products, services and marketing for global consumers that take into account hundreds of cultural differences.  "Boundaries are no longer geographic and physical,” says Rhodora Palomar-Fresnedi (video clip below), Unilever's global vice president of diversity based in Singapore.  “We’re meeting and greeting and interacting in ways that are very different from the ways we looked at the world before.”

 

 

Companies are promoting a global-style approach that goes beyond U.S. compliance-driven diversity and federally-required hiring data.  Among many other traits, global diversity looks at generations, gender, languages and dialects, religions, ways of thinking, business practices, cultural traditions – even soccer rivalries.  In other countries, the U.S. concept of “minorities” has no meaning or historical context, and American-style diversity does not translate well overseas.   So Terex, an equipment manufacturer with sites in Europe, Russia, Asia and Latin America, came up with a new term:  “non-majority.”  According to Terex diversity executives Amy George and Rueben Stokes, the word is very flexible and can refer to anyone who is not part of the majority at any global site.  Says Stokes:  “In Germany, it could mean a non-German male.  It could mean a non-U.S. candidate for a U.S-based job.  It could mean a person of color, an ethnic minority, a woman.  It could be someone who brings different characteristics to the table.”  ("Terex" by T! Mo, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

Another global diversity leader:  PepsiCo, where a pioneering black executive named Edward Boyd set the foundation for niche marketing to ethnic consumers in the 1940s.  Boyd launched the first African American sales team to help the company break into what was then called the $10 billion Negro market.  Today, business watchers know that the $40 billion PepsiCo is led by Indra Nooyi, a Yale-educated native of India who is transforming the legendary U.S. company “to take full advantage of the new marketplace,” says Ronald Parker, PepsiCo’s global diversity officer.  "We're at the juncture where we need to redefine the meaning of diversity in a much broader context," Parker says. “This is a whole new game.”  Mark Schiller, president of PepsiCo’s Quaker Foods and Snacks, adds:  “It’s not about representation and numbers.  It has to be about leveraging the fact that we live in a very diverse society.”  ("Indra Nooyi - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos 2008" by Remy Steinegger and World Economic Forum, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

For many years, corporate boardrooms of the West have been ruled by what Infosys Chairman Narayana Murthy has called “a tyranny of ignorance and a tyranny of bigotry.”  Even now, some in the business realm believe that leadership skills, creative chops and the work ethos belong only to people who look like them.  Luckily, that’s changing.  More corporations are led by global and cross-cultural executives whose business views and management styles reflect the world:  Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn (photo left).  Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers.  Walmart CEO Michael Duke.  Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger.   Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata.  AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega.   CEMEX CEO Lorenzo Zambrano (photo right).  Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carroll (photo lower left).  The new breed of business leaders will transform industries for the better.  A generation from now, most U.S. corporations will look vastly different.  Their workplaces will be integrated by hundreds of cultures and ethnicities.  Their dragon’s share of revenue will come from other countries.  Their corporate headquarters will be based in multiple nations.  And their global diversity strategies -- in workforce training, in sales and marketing, in product development, in mergers and acquisitions -- will come as naturally to companies as posting profits.

(Photo credit above left: "Carlos Ghosn - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2008" by Remy Steinegger and World Economic Forum, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

In the new mulatto world, brainpower and innovation know no borders, and the colors of currency will prevail.  Our DNA comes from Africa, our movies from India, our laptops from China.  As more cultures and industries converge, the hybrids and half-bloods of the new business order can no longer be ignored.  We might even see a color-blind economy in our lifetimes.  No doubt, global diversity and cross-cultural companies only will grow in value.  We're all mutts now. 

("Cisco CEO John Chambers at Cisco Live 2009 in San Francisco" by Cisco Pics, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)