April 6, 2005
“flatlined”
Fred Wilson makes an encouraging point about globalisation:
Why should my country matter more than my world? If the world is becoming smarter, more open, more free, and with more opportunity for everyone, I think that’s a wonderful thing. My kids are going to have to step it up a notch to keep up with the competition. And I think they will do just fine.
I have a friend who’s a carpenter. Most of his business is within a 20-mile radius from where he lives. I suggested he started blogging. Make his schtick global. Who knows, maybe some Japanese guy will see it, dig his work and offer to fly him over to Japan to build a new house. That kind of thing.
Why not?
He’ll have to be pretty good to be flown over to Japan. Not everyone are that good…
Hugh,
» Why not?
because these kind of things only happen on tv.
WM_FYI
thomas woelfer
You’re quite the Byronic blogger Hugh. Very romantic. It’s one possible outcome of a carpenter blogging, although I’ll wager it’s not the most likely. If he blogged in Japanese… now you’re talking.
I love the idea of diminishing borders… makes the world a more united place.
“because these kind of things only happen on tv.”
thomas, that is your self-imposed limitation, not mine
»If he blogged in Japanese… now you’re talking.
The Japanese tend to speak English…and several other languages…better than the native speakers do. If he’s a good enough carpenter, someone in Japan will want him, regardless of the language barrier.
That’s what makes many Japanese businesspeople so formidable. They generally dont allow piddly little details like language to stop them making good business.
Nice work, Hugh.
Ummm… Guys, I was using Japan as an EXAMPLE.
In the last week or two English Cut (my current main business) has landed business from people in France, South Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Virginia, Minneapolis… oh, and a small little country called England.
Jeez Louise.
I got it Hugh …
I think the example works OK for physically-delivered services and products, but it works SO MUCH better for knowledge-based stuff that I can’t see how anybody with a knowledge-based “thing” trying to start a business couldn’t view their market as global.
Your carpenter friend should really think about hiring an ad agency to write the blogs for him (with the comments turned off of course). As matter of fact, the ad agency should also outsource the editorial task to Bombay.
Drop the negativity folks. I do know a carpenter — a kitchen cabinet maker actually — who put his stuff up on the web and did do this kind of travelling road carpentry. The first time was kinda cool — the second a long way from home. But a *good* carpenter doesn’t need to travel or advertise past word of mouth — he (or she) has all the work they can handle without going far from home.
England? Where’s that?
“As matter of fact, the ad agency should also outsource the editorial task to Bombay”
And why not? I’m more than half way through Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, and the responses to both his article and the book that I’ve seen around the web are only bringing home to me the reasons why he felt the need to write it with the urgency he did.
You see, Indian engineers from Bangalore University may already be innovating in your backyard, you just don’t know it yet. I’m one. Indian product designers from http://www.nid.edu may already be creative and conceptual and right brain oriented as per Dan Pink’s new book. And the bottom line isn’t whether they are or they arent, the bottom line is that the US needs to understand the magnitude of the changes sweeping through corporate america. Not just rote work or low paid labor jobs offshored to India and China, but the point that Friedman makes about companies like http://www.wildbrain.com outsourcing their animation work to designers in Bangalore. When the creative industries are offshored, what then will be your bastions, your walls, against services offered globally. My sister is an award winning copywriter who worked with Lintas, Grey, Ogilvy & Mather, what stops her from offering those services sitting at home in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi? You’ll say she doesn’t get the culture? She was brought up all over the world and has proper GCE O Levels… that will be the real threat, not the $1 a day body servant you speak of. Yes, labor is cheap, and it seems exploitation that a man can be hired to follow you around for a dollar a day. But what you don’t realise is that the purchasing power parity of that dollar a day translates to his supporting entire families in the his native village while he works in the big city. In addition, that body servant frees up people like my sister from doing housework to sit there and go online and offer services around the world to people who do not care where she’s located as long as the service she provides is world class. The danger isn’t from the Indian or the chinese who sits in his hovel, it’s from the entreprenuerial literate ones who have access to the same internet resources you do. With the same level if not more of education you do.
I work with clients in the US on how to grow their creative businesses in light of these changes… this articulates the threat that the industry faces http://www.core77.com/reactor/03.05_niti_bhan.asp
and this supports the current situation http://www.core77.com/reactor/04.05_cordy_swope.asp
“it’s not really going to happen” you say “har har carpenters in Japan”…at the speed things are changing, it won’t even take 2 years to see which way this plays out.
//end rant.
Please accept my apologies for the above rant… I truly believe that the world is flat and it’s a soap box I get up on, Hyde Park London or Hyde Park Chicago
No need to apologise, Niti… I pretty much agree with you 100%.
Back when I started getting into advertising in London in the late 1980s, British advertising was considered the best in the world, by both themselves and by others.
Since then the British advertising scene has changed little (same Soho mohair-suit wankers mouthing off the same old trendy tripe and cutey-pie ideas)… except in the intrerim it has become seriously irrelevant to most of what’s interesting out there, in global terms.
They were too busy being “the best in the world” to get with the program.
I’m trying to think of ONE well-known British advertising agency doing interesting things… and nothing comes to me.
Heh — yes, I remember being dragged off to see the Palme D’or award videos when I was but a young ‘un at McCann.
Same goes for the British design industry, a few hundred years ago when I was in design school, it was The Design Council that was most prestigious (late eighties) and the UK designers had a name for being best in the world. Along came IDEO…
Who’s next?
That’s the really powerful idea in Friedman’s Flat World theory, not the cheap labour, not the offshoring, not the grunt work, but the rise of the global individual — viz., your experience with Savile Row suits, the blog and global orders coming in. Your friend the tailor ( which when you think about it, the tailor is the one craftsman we just don’t think about as a global service provider) is an extremely powerful case in point. Communication, blogs, the internet, email, all of which have enabled his services to be known by people all over, through you, another service provider, and none of us, your readers, you, or your friend the tailor, even NEED to be in the same parish, much less time zone.
If that’s not a proof of concept, I don’t know what is…
Hat’s off, Hugh
canada, hugh.…lots of suits needed in canada. think montreal…very cosmopolitan.…very chilly.…perfect suit environment…
There is a Carpenter who blogs:
http://ripples.typepad.com/ripples/affordable_designs_in_wood/index.html
St. Lukes is in Mumbai:
http://www.agencyfaqs.com/news/interviews/data/113.html
Hugh’s example is not far-fetched at all.
Discriminating customers are your opening to a worldwide market.
If Hugh’s carpenter friend towers head and shoulders over other carpenters as Thomas does with other tailors, he will receive attention from customers wherever they are.
When your stock in trade is ideas, your reach is global, but everyone with a keyboard stands ready to knock off your product and sell it cheaper. If you are Hugh MacLeod, your product is extremely difficult to clone.
Thanks Avi, for the plug. I am a blogger who designs in wood to support his writing habit. Most of my customers are local, but I get business from widely dispersed customers because of the internet. To the extent that my designs in wood or my books are unique, I get business from more distant locations. The product has to be difficult to clone in order for customers to take the step of seeking you out and paying to get your product delivered over a long distance.
Unique products and discriminating customers are the key to a global customer base.
I think that most people are used to leveraging artificial borders to protect their revenue stream, ie. national/state borders, patents, etc.
The only people that I see against globalization are those who are unable to make it, competing in the global arena, and are terrified of accepting “global minimum wage”.