MOVING STORY IN the San Jose Mercury News on Orphan Impact, a nonprofit that provides computer training to orphans in Vietnam. Tad Kincaid, founder of Orphan Impact, tells the Mercury News: "They are the forgotten children of Vietnam . . . We are teaching them 21st-century skills." The project is funded by private donors and corporations such as Intel, which donated laptops and sent technologists to teach the eager students.
A NEW REPORT by the World Bank confirms all the more that global economic power and growth, by many measures, is shifting rapidly from the United States to fast-growing countries. By 2025, six economies -- Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea and Russia -- will drive more than half of all global growth, and the global monetary system likely will be dominated by the U.S. dollar, the euro and the Chinese renminbi, according to the report. In a news release, World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin says: "The fast rise of emerging economies has driven a shift whereby the centers of economic growth are distributed across developed and developing economies – it’s a truly multipolar world."
LINKEDIN REPORTEDLY WAS valued at $1 billion a few years back, when Yahoo! was believed to be eyeing the Silicon Valley-based business networking site. Now LinkedIn is worth more than $4 billion, based on new higher share prices for its highly-anticipated initial public offering. (See the company's public filing today with the Securities and Exchange Commission.)
CORPORATE SPEAK AND cliches from CEOs can drive analysts and journalists mad. So it's as refreshing as a cold one on a hot day to hear a global CEO play soothsayer and predict the long-run fate of his company, far beyond its first quarter just reported.
Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent recently told the Atlantic Journal-Constitution's Henry Unger that the fast-rising global middle-class and their spending power could help Coke and its bottlers-distributors double their current, combined $100 billion in global revenue by 2020. "It's not for the fainthearted, but it’s achievable," Kent said.
MANY QUESTIONS, AS Communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro steps down on Tuesday. Will Cuba adopt a Chinese or Latin American model, and let trade and its economy bloom? Will brother Raul Castro keep introducing Western-style market practices? Will the Cuban military loosen its hold on businesses? Will the United States export more than medicine and agricultural goods? Cuba watchers have speculated for years about the fate of the island nation, barely 200 miles from American shores. Maybe change will come now.
DRILLING DEEP INTO the urbanization megatrend, a new study by the McKinsey Global Institute finds that most of the world's growth from the 1990s through 2025 comes not from famed megacities, but from hundreds of mid-sized "middleweight" cities that boast new investment and businesses, rising household income and other pillars of thriving economies. Highlights:
AS NEWS STORIES on Egypt wane, a huge question remains: Where is the nation's economy heading? Toward more iron-fisted military and state rule? Toward a more open Western-style market? Or toward a chaotic marriage of both? Will corruption continue, or will rule of law gain a foothold?
SAY WHAT? DIDN'T jet to Davos to give a keynote, or to nosh with the world's billionaires? Not even a thought leader in your own cubicle? Gotta work on that, between the get-rich seminar and the Toastmasters class. In the meantime, here's some happy happy business news beyond the gloom-and-doom from Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, speaking via YouTube before the World Economic Forum's annual Davos gathering:
LIKE A VAST wave, you could see this business megatrend rising a decade or so ago. More revenues, more investments,more employees, more R&D, more everything coming from fast-growing businesses overseas. Now, that trend -- the emergence of new companies in rapidly developing economies -- clearly is a powerful pillar of the global economy that will reshape the world, says the Boston Consulting Group, which has been studying global companies for many years.
WE'RE AT A global turning point, with forces that are converging and diverging at a frightening pace. Or, as the World Economic Forum and risk-management companies have found in a new "Global Risks 2011" report, we face "a 21st century paradox: as the world grows together, it is also growing apart . . . Globalization has generated sustained economic growth for a generation. It has shrunk and reshaped the world, making it far more interconnected and interdependent. But the benefits of globalization seem unevenly spread – a minority is seen to have harvested a disproportionate amount of the fruits." Not your pleasant bed-time reading. Among the greatest threats to global growth and stability:
Economic disparity and the worsening gap between rich and poor countries and peoples.
Complex and difficult global governance on all issues, from trade to climate change.
The $1.3 trillion "illegal economy," including corruption, organized crime and other black market activities.
"Macroeconomic imbalances," or economic risks such as trade and savings imbalances, currency volatility and fiscal crises.
Shortages of water, food and energy that could lead to social and political conflict and irreversible environmental damage.
Source: World Economic Forum,"Global Risks 2011" co-edited by Kristel Van der Elst and Nicholas Davis.
