Mientras en México se preocupan por que no exportamos ni siquiera nopales y tunas que crecen de a gratis en el campo, me encontré los “higos de cactus” (como los llaman acá) arriba de 140 pesos por kilo como se ve en la foto.

¿Cuándo nos vamos a dar cuenta que hay más mercados que el estadounidense en este mundo para conquistar, y más productos que el petróleo y la maquila con los cuales hacer dinero?

I love watching movies, especially at home. I have a Sony full-HD TV & home theatre system at home and am planning to get a compatible Blu-Ray player of the same brand at some point.  My efforts to go HD with my movie collection have hit a snag, however: I don’t buy all my movies in Europe so I need multi-region players.  Sony doesn’t seem to sell multi-region Blu-Ray players, only DVD players.

Why wouldn’t I get all my stuff here? Simple, they don’t sell many Mexican or Asian movies here, and for Disney movies especially I like Mexican dubbing, just as for anime I prefer Finnish dubbing instead.  I don’t download movies nor buy pirated goods, so am especially annoyed by all the warnings in the movies I buy every time I play them.

Why would the movie industry punish me by treating me like a delinquent instead of a customer?  Why can’t enjoy media I pay for? Don’t they understand I’m a paying customer asking for a product, if they would only provide it to me?

You’ve probably seen the ads if you watch the Beeb or CNN: a dreary-postindustrialised world in CGI that is thoroughly transformed into a tree-hugger paradise when Sean Connery pronounces the magic words “Back to common sense, it’s time for green banking” in that lovely Scottish accent of his.

I’m terribly sorry to say this but if you don’t explain to me properly why would I believe you as a bank stand for sustainable development and a reduced carbon footprint, even if I have no chance of becoming your retail customer I’d say you’re full of it (and quite some people agree).  These are the kinds of campaigns that give marketing a bad name, really.

I am a proud product of the Finnish educational system (as well as the Mexican and Belgian ones), but as much as I think it gives you a great preparation, there is a few things that I’d like to see changed:

• Knowledge of the world: While they focus a lot on the technical foundations of your chosen subject, cross-cultural, geographical and historical awareness outside of Europe seems to be lacking.  Funny given their strong focus on foreign language education.
• Presentation skills: I’ve mentioned it before, but I think it’s crucial to know how to communicate and sell your ideas.  You only learn through practice, so it is very important to get started early. I remember I was doing English-language presentations already in 3rd grade.
• Financial skills: This is something that would be necessary not only here in Finland, especially with the proliferation of express loans.  Knowing how to handle your money is a basic skill for life.

When I was a student in Mexico, in order to help my parents pay for my education I also had a scholarship/financing deal with the school, which meant I would do some assistant work in one of the departments.  A friend of mine was working in school administration, and I joined in.  There I had was trained on a technique that has helped me throughout my career.

Instead of just thinking of managing a project solely through deliverables, reviews and milestones, this focuses on the human component and the conversations that you as the project owner have with your stakeholders and contributors.   Therefore, you focus bit by bit on closing (completing) those simultaneous conversations to get closer to your specified goals.

It probably sounds obvious and even a little bit simplistic, but turning its tables on the process to work through the people rather than focus on the task on its own is an approach that has proven time and again to be effective in the ocassions when I’ve used it.  It also helps us “touchy-feely Latin types” to use our strengths to deliver, and builds strong personal relationships with your team.

You might have heard of peak oil, the idea explaining the point in time when we have reached the maximum amount of oil produced, after which starts a decline that affects the world as we know it (and yes, I’m using this phrase on purpose).  Jeff Rubin, a Canadian economist, took the issue head-on in this book, explaining not only why in his view the current economic crisis is at its source one huge oil price shock, but also how will the world economy change once oil is not so plentiful, more expensive and there are more economies hungry for it.

Basically, what he predicts is an end to the current version of globalisation, where you have distributed value chains, cheap travel and products from all over the world at your doorstep.  I don’t know about you, but even if I live more or less ecologically, use renewable energy where possible and don’t have a car, such a future would wreak havoc with my lifestyle as it would be impossible for me to find the food I want and be able to visit my family over the holidays.  The subtitle of this blog is “musings from a child of globalisation” after all, isn’t it?

I think it is time to sweep this issue under the rug every time it is brought up and start thinking about what kind of innovations are needed.  Who’s with me?

One situation I encounter time and again is people who have great insight but cannot communicate it forward as they haven’t learned to give a presentation.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m an expert nor that it is easy to do.  However, the ability to give presentations is an absolutely fundamental skill regardless of your profession, and is something that I feel is not stressed enough in Finnish education (I remember one of my teachers in Belgium used to complain about that after having seen many Finnish exchange students), to the detriment of business here (I am yet to count how many times I’ve heard that “We have great ideas but don’t know how to sell them“).

I haven’t tried them (most of what I know about speaking in public I learned in Models United Nations as a teenager), but I understand a good way to improve in this area is to try Toastmasters.  They even have a Helsinki chapter.

En México y el Círculo Polar Ártico, la cerveza es… Corona (o Sol).

Originally uploaded by Chiva Congelado

¿Las cervezas mexicanas que se venden en Europa se embotellan de este lado del charco o las importan ya listas para distribuir en sus puntos de venta?

You may have noticed that the rate of new posts in this blog has slowed down a little.  Most of it is simply due to the fact that I’m spending a hell of a lot of time working these days (a common joke with my buddy Phil is that we see more of each other during the week than of our wives), so I don’t have that much time to share certain things as when I was studying my masters.

Furthermore, most of the impulses and insights that I have nowadays are related to work, and as you may have noticed I don’t feel comfortable blogging about it externally unless its public, live and water under the bridge (a not-so-uncommon problem).  For that reason I have started a Nokia internal blog where I post my thoughts on services, devices, marketing and industry shifts as I see them happening.  If you also work for the company and would like to read it, tell me and I’ll send you the link).

This doesn’t mean that this blog will whither and die (on the contrary, I plan to give it more attention now that it has finally moved to its own server and I was able to clean all 800-plus entries), but that I’m still trying to evaluate what focus to give it.  Let’s see what it brings, and hope you want to continue reading.

Ever since reading The World is Flat and checking out books on the creative economy, I've been wondering if Mexico is competing in the wrong niche.  Since before the start of NAFTA in the 90's, the country has focused on the maquiladora sector, basically using the wage differential between Mexico and the United States for its gain.

Since 2000, however, we found out that China, even being so far away, has basically strong competitive advantages to beat Mexico at that game, regardless of the location of both countries.  They can produce faster, cheaper and with less of a fuzz.  Mexican industries, however, have specialised in sectors that require just-in-time delivery or very specialised knowledge, leaving them vulnerable to the oscillation of supply and demand in those areas.

The Tec de Monterrey, one of Mexico's leading universities, has been trying to foster the creation of a knowledge economy, but I think that is not the right focus.  A knowledge economy presupposes the dependence on knowledge created elswhere, with the relevant fees for patents and such, whereas we should be focusing on going further than that.  This, however, needs more initiative than we seem to have…