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January 30, 2006
Globalization Close to Home
One of Friedman's many interesting points is that organizations always lag behind the social impact of technology. Here's an example close to home: I've just published an MIS book with Prentice-Hall. PH is owned by Pearson, the U.K. publisher, and Pearson is organized geographically. Pearson owns Prentice-Hall in the U.S., but there are also Pearson companies for Europe/Mid-East/Africa, one for Australia, and ones for other parts of the world.
My book was published by PH in the U.S., and it receives strong support from my U.S. editor and from the National (U.S.) sales manager and sales team. While those people are not opposed to international sales, they have no economic or other incentive to be anything more than polite to the international companies. As an author, however, I'd like to sell as many books around the world as I can.
Enter Friedman: Globalization via the individual. Email, modern technology, etc., make it easy for me, as an individual, to develop relationships with the international sales managers. I know, for example, the sales manager in Australia, and this Wednesday, I'll be speaking with her team at their national sales meeting via phone. (BTW, the Aussies meet in Surf City, Queensland! (Wow, here's a shocker: FrontPage thinks Queensland is misspelled!))
The Australian sales manager and I promoted this meeting ourselves -- no Pearson organizational structure opposes our meeting, in fact, everyone involved would say, 'Good job.' The point, however, is that nothing in the current Pearson organization actively supports such collaboration -- it just doesn't interfere with it. And, to Friedman's point: the sales manager and I can promote international cooperation on our own, as individuals. And this sort of collaboration is just the tip of the iceberg~!
Posted by DavidK at January 30, 2006 08:11 AM | Permalink