The merger of globalization and the I.T. revolution means new products are being phased in and out so fast that companies cannot afford to wait until the end of the year to figure out whether a team leader is doing a good job.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The Industrial Revolution caused a centuries-long shift in power to the West; globalization is now shifting the balance again.
Globalization is not a monolithic force but an evolving set of consequences - some good, some bad and some unintended. It is the new reality.
Whole new businesses will emerge around breakthrough products as revolutionary technologies accelerate capitalism's creative destruction of slower industries.
During the boom years of the 1990s, globalization emerged as the most significant development in our national life. With NAFTA and the Internet and big-box stores selling cheap goods from China, the line between national and international began to blur.
'Globalization' has become the great tag phrase, but when we talk about it, it's nearly always in terms of the global marketplace or communications technology - either data or goods that are whizzing around. We forget that people are whizzing around more and more. On them, it takes a toll.
The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light.
The merger mania which goes on and on and on is the sign of the disappearance of competition. As we deregulate, the mergers increase, which means there's less and less competition. At the national level, at the regional level, but also at the international level.
The breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That's when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.
We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step.
Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.