cool global BIZ

She's a BRIC House - Global Power BRIC Keeps Getting Stronger

 

BRIC leaders in 2010.  Photo by Jose Cruz of Agencia Brasil, from Wikimedia Commons.

 

CoolGlobalBiz, Jan. 3, 2011

FASTER THAN YOU can say mighty mighty, that BRIC house keeps rising as a global powerhouse.  In little-noticed news over Christmas, Chinese President Hu Jintao invited South African President Jacob Zuma to meet with BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) leaders in Beijing in 2011.  According to Bloomberg, Zuma said that South Africa will be "a good gateway for the BRIC countries.  While we may have a small population . . . we speak for Africa as a whole."

  

Global Currency War? Whither the Almighty U.S. Dollar? Any Other Deep Thoughts to Ponder as We Wander Through the Shadow of the Valley of -

 

CoolGlobalBiz, Dec. 3, 2010

YOU KNOW, EARLY in any crisis, the contrarians always get ignored.  Like the robot in the old Lost in Space TV show, they see Danger! Danger! Danger!, while others shrug and pooh-pooh the problem.  Then the crisis smacks us, and contrarians can only yowl and yank out their hair.  It happened in the tech dot.com collapse of 2001.  It happened in the Enron era of corporate scandals.  It happened with the mortgage meltdown.  Or take the debate over global currency, please.  Those good ol' contrarians have warned for years that one day, globalization could lead to the U.S. dollar losing favor.  That one day, our almighty coin might no longer be coin of the realm.  That one day, BRIC nations might not fear the greenback, and a currency war and monetary chaos could break out, like so many zits.  You don't have to be Warren Buffett or even Jimmy Buffett to ask:  Has that day arrived?

(Photo, above) Cast from the TV series Lost in Space (1965-1968), created and produced by Irwin Allen ©CBS, at Wikipedia.com.

  

CoolGlobalBiz: Three Global Business Trends That Will Rock Your World More Than Lebron James

 

 

"Lebron James" by themmg (Maximilian Dimslage) of the Maximilian Media Group in Germany, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.  Sorry, Lebron, but Julius Erving is still the king.  Dr. J. swooping to the hoop for a high-flying dunk made grown men scream.  (See below.) 

 

YOU LIKE TO watch ballgames and TMZ.  Read food and travel stories.  Follow Lindsay Lohan and Lebron James, while ignoring the Fed.  Fun, yes.  But man cannot live on junk food alone.  Your brain will start rotting, like roadkill on the highway.  Really.  Here's some serious news: these three global business trends are shaping our futures in every way imaginable:

 

CoolGlobalBiz: The Race to Build the World's Tallest Building, or Does Height Really Matter?

 

WHY DOES GLOBAL MAN try so hard to build record-breaking highrises?  The world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, already exists in Dubai.  Now the $27 billion Kingdom Tower, to be built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, will rise a mile high -- twice as tall as the Burj.  Why do this?  For global bragging rights and prestige?  To impress tourists and businesses?  Because they can, like mountain climbing and space exploration?  And are these steel-and-concrete giants real architectural milestones, or ornate shrines to excess?  This is beyond my ken.  Someone please explain.  

 

In the United States a century ago, great captains of industry raced to build skyscrapers in New York and Chicago.  Now it's Asia and the Middle East's turn.  Are wealthy emerging nations building humongous highrises simply because their money men and economies can afford it?  Joseph Stiglitz I ain't, but I know strong economies need infrastructure, energy, technology, rule of law, stable financial markets, a thriving workforce, good education, decent housing, business-friendly policies, natural resources, and more.  So why is building the planet's No. 1 highrise an urgent priority?

Graphics above: Burj Dubai (Burj Khalifa) by GDS Infographics and Tiffany Farrant, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.

 

Some say that highrises reflect boom business cycles and easy money, that skyscrapers rise with rising economies.  (See below, "Skyscrapers as Economic Indicators.")  Or maybe it's a rich-guy-my-monument-is-bigger-than-yours-leave-a-legacy kind of thing.  Sure seems that way, if you read the famed 1896 essay "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered" by Louis Sullivan, a father of modern architecture who coined the phrase "form ever follows function."  Sullivan wrote:

 

"What is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? . . . It must be tall, every inch of it tall.  The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exultation must be in it.  It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing . . . . "

 

I get it.  These insights come slowly to us proles on the ground floor.  Just thinking what I'd do with $27 billion, after paying bills and taxes.

 

GulfNews.com, "Tallest tower plan in Jeddah on track: Kingdom Holding says construction of the Adrian Smith mega structure will go ahead" by Abdul Nabi Shaheen.

Wikipedia, "Skyscraper."

Emporis, "Official World's 200 Tallest High-rise Buildings."

MarketUrbanism.com, "Skyscrapers as Economic Indicators."

 

From Africa to Asia, the Colors (Colours) of Beauty are Changing the Global Beauty Industry

 

 

"The State of the Global Beauty Industry: Entering a New Chapter"  by Euromonitor International, via YouTube.  Irina Barbalova, Euromonitor's head of cosmetics research, recapping her presentation made at In-Cosmetics 2010 in Paris, France.

 

THE MISS UNIVERSE CONTESTANTS might look like Barbie dolls in different shades.  But beyond glitzy pageants, the colors and colours of beauty are slowly but surely changing global consumer culture and the beauty industry, according to SkinInc.com ("Skin Color of the United States" by Daphne Kasriel-Alexander) and a new book by Harvard Business School professor Geoffrey Jones (Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry) . . . From cosmetics to luxury spas, Kasriel-Alexander writes that "globalization is transforming the beauty industry, with brands being forced to respond to a far greater diversity of cultures and lifestyles as new markets open up worldwide.  In the beauty realm, physiological differences between Caucasians and other ethnic groups have created a huge market for specialized skin and hair care products" . . . In his book, Jones cites China as an example of the rapid, cross-border spread of beauty brands and fashion trends.  Three decades ago, cosmetics were seen as symbols of "bourgeois decadence" there.  But now, he writes, China is the world's No. 4 market for beauty products.

 

EuroMonitor International, "Frontier markets a new beauty hotspot as the BRICs cool down" by Diana Dodson.

Business of Fashion, "Inside Brazil's Booming Fashion Industry" by Suleman Anaya.

BBC News, "Deal in Brazil fashion race row" by Gary Duffy.

AfricanNews.com, "Oyebade: Bright Future Awaits Models of Colour" by Stephen Ogongo.

Financial Times, "Booming beauty industry unveiled in Saudi" by Abeer Allam.

Guardian.co.uk, India's myth of fair-skinned beauty" by Anjana Gosai. 

Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, "The History of Beauty: Q&A with Geoffrey G. Jones" by Sean Silverthorne.

 

Hoopball in the Philippines: "Pacific Rims" Book by Fulbright Fellow Rafe Bartholomew

Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’s Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball by Rafe Bartholomew.  Courtesy of Penguin Group USA via YouTube.

 

HOOPBALL IN THE Philippines?  Yeah, baby.  Fulbright fellow Rafe Bartholomew has a new book out on the Filipinos' passion for basketball.  (Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’s Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball -- great title.)  Brings back childhood memories of b-ball on the hot concrete courts of inner-city L.A.  If you can't afford golf, tennis or fancy bike gear, there's always pick-up basketball games in the summer sun and winter chill.  Asians and Asian Americans can play.  Lot of youngbloods excited over Harvard University guard Jeremy Lin's recent signing with the NBA's Golden State Warriors don't know that the first Chinese American to play at a high level was the late William "Woo Woo" Wong, a hot-shooting, 5-foot-5, University of San Francisco guard coached by basketball legend Pete Newell way back in the 1940s.  (SFGate.com, "Willie Wong -- 1940s Basketball Star.")  Old school still rules in hoops.
 

• Asia Society, "Pacific Rims: Interview with Author Rafe Bartholomew" by Lea McLellan.
• Forbes.com blogs, "Q&A: Rafe Bartholomew, Basketball Fan" by Elisa Mala.

"Basketball #3" by benjieordonez, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.

Global Flow of Immigrants -- the "Human Face of Globalization" -- Hurt by Financial Crisis

"Irregular Greenhouse Workers, Las Norias, Almería, Spain, 2003" by Dr John2005. Under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.

 

THE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN has dramatically slowed the strong flow of legal immigrants across borders, according to the OECD.  Worldwide immigration fell 6% in 2008 to 4.4 million, ending five years of strong growth and average yearly increases of 11%.  From laborers to college graduates, legal immigrants also have found it much harder to land jobs, with their unemployment rate rising nearly 9% in the first quarter of 2010, according to the OECD International Migration Outlook 2010 released today.

Do the FIFA World Cup and Global Sports Events Uplift and Unite Us?

 

The Spanish-language version of Shakira's song Waka Waka (This Time for Africa/Esto es África), has been chosen as Univision's official theme for its exclusive Spanish-language coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™.  Perfomed by Shakira.

WHILE SOCCER FANS and South Africa celebrate the start of the FIFA World Cup, the question lingers: What would those billions of dollars have done for housing, education, and healthcare in the world's poorest continent?  From the Olympics to the NFL's Super Bowl, sports mega-events are pure creatures of marketing, with little long-run ripple effect on the economies of the host nation or region.  The cost of the events always balloons, and the cash spent by visitors and corporations seems to vanish with the last point scored.

(Art, left) "2010 Soccer World Cup Mascot Zakumi"by Shine2010, under a Creative Commons license via flickr.com.

Money Flows To and Fro, Where It Stops Nobody Knows. Reuters Looks at Frontier Markets

 

MONEY AND CAPITAL flow like water, wherever there's opportunity . . . That point gets driven home in a wide-ranging and informative package of business stories by Reuters on the global frontier markets . . . Typically, the Western media only covers distant quarters of the world when there's an earthquake or tsunami, a new travel destination, or rioting in the streets . . . But Reuters takes a deep dive into the economy of several emerging nations, looking at everything from consumers in Vietnam ("Consumers Drive Vietnam into Golden Age" by Rafael Nam and John Ruwitch) to technology and innovation in Estonia ("Skype Brings Internet Revolution to Estonia" by Kiryl Suthotski . . . One story that illustrates the ever-changing nature of the global economy and money flows: "South Africa overshadowed by growth of the rest" by Matthew Tostevin, who writes that South Africa's growth as Africa's economic giant will slow in the coming decades, as Nigeria and other countries rise to economic power.

(Photo above) "The smelting works at Rustenburg 3" by bbcworldservice, under a Creative Commons license via flickr.com. The Impala Platinum mine in Rustenburg, South Africa.

 

Happy Mama's Day to All Global Mamas

Mama Lucy Kampton, a former poultry farmer in Tanzania who built a school for kids in her village. Video courtesy of EpicChange on YouTube. 

HAPPY MAMA'S DAY -- Epic Change, a nonprofit in San Francisco dedicated to telling stories that change the world, has launched a "To Mama With Love" campaign to harness blogs and Twitter to raise funds for Mama Lucy Kampton.  Mama Lucy is a former chicken farmer who used her own money to build the Shepherd's Junior School in Arusha, Tanzania, for 400 children in her village.  Stacey Monk, co-founder of Epic Change and formerly of Deloitte Consulting, says in a news release: "We think it will be very powerful to see people across the globe join together to share love for their mamas."  Monk and Epic Change co-founder Sanjay Patel own Funken Consulting, a management consulting firm in San Francisco.