¿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…
You might have heard that the Chinese are investing heavily in Africa. What you may not know is that there's also Africans doing business in China.
The brief at Monocle (subscription only).
Was in London on Friday. As usual, absolutely love the city, one of my favourites in the world. One thing that truly stood out this time was that we had a business lunch during a meeting. They brought some sandwiches, potato chips, fruit and cheeses to the room, and we continued as usual. The attitude to it was very contrasting to a business lunch I had in a similar situation in Paris, where we had trays with 3-course meals brought to the room, and the meeting itself was stopped during lunch.
I'm not saying one is better than the other, but it drove home the point of food-as-fuel vs. food-as-a-ritual.
The author gave a talk in a creativity congress I attended last year, and finally I decided to buy the book he referred to.
Given that I already knew the main concepts in his book, I didn't get a lot of new things out of it. The concepts he refers to are very familiar so one could say that it's a new package, but the same stuff.
Rot learning won't help you much anymore…
If you ever end up in a position or project where you need to deal with the intrincacies of price-setting and management, this is the book for you.
This (and other books) is what I’ve been reading for my final project, so I’m sorry if the posts haven’t been so interesting lately, but as you can imagine I’m focused on something else at the moment.
34 students of a total of 411 at Duke's business school were found guilty of cheating. I wonder whether they learned their lesson.
I guess that's not the kind of business leaders we're looking for, is it?
Via Lee Iwan's blog.
A French friend of mine who worked for Air France Cargo in Mexico told me the following anecdote.
"When I started working, my boss told me: "Boy, there is a phrase that summarises what it is like to do business here: "Seguro mañana te pago" (loosely translated to "I'll pay you tomorrow for sure"). Once you understand these four words separately and what they mean together, you'll understand what it is like to work here"."
I couldn't stop laughing, not only at the phrase, but at the fact that it's actually very true and shows quite a few things of the typical Mexican psyque.
