The business world of engineering seems to have, all of a sudden, gotten exciting. One day we may look back on the '90s as a magical time for the partnerships that were built.
Trade Driving?
Three goals permeate the business climate today; they're not new but their importance is reaffirmed with a vengeance. Efficiency, doing more with less, pleases stockholders best. Effectiveness means do things right the first time; this pleases customers and it limits unnecessary expenses. Finally, competitiveness means doing it better and perhaps faster than others, and hopefully at lower cost. More recently, it means doing all of this well a long, long way from home. Indeed these forces have contributed to recent increases in quality, productivity, and reduced cycle times. More brutally, restructurings, downsizings, and industry shakeouts have also resulted. More of the same is expected. Results for many industries look good, although looks can deceive. Numerous firms have "faced the fire and found religion." They understand that steady-state is no longer an option-eat or get eaten. Companies are lauded for positive cash flow and for surviving turbulence; still, they have no guarantee of continued success. The big appetites these days are for quarterly and year-end performance. Such voracity does center one on the next meal.
Greener Grass
Transportation and communications have at once made the world smaller and its markets larger. Appeal to appetite is obvious. Expanded market territory promises increased volume. Developing economies offer not only the chance to participate in their growth, but also the opportunity for lower production costs. Similar opportunities, like it or not, will and do exist for engineering, research, and development functions. Communications technology obviates the need to replicate entire business operations in every major city served, although it cannot itself overcome other barriers: culture, language, and allegiance to home turf, for example. It does make partnerships among diverse constituencies easier to form and manage. This is no different in one country than it is in another. Thus need and ~ technology coexist to nurture structures like virtual enterprise, global joint venture, and electronic commerce. In their infancy, many already thrive.
Joint ventures are a way to transcend these hurdles through partnership. In developing economies, assuming a host and a guest comprise the partnership, the host sees local needs the clearest and is most likely to navigate the attendant opportunities effectively. The guest brings other assets to the table, presumably product technology, experience, reputation, capital resources, and established market presence. Both parties have important intelligence and resources to share, and both stand to gain significantly from the venture. Joint ventures in developing markets imply a lot of things-short-term profit is not among them.
Epochal Nearsightedness
As the millennium approaches strategic plans have been curiously short in view. I think popular emphases on growth and quarterly performance figures as fundamental drivers of corporate strategy have done much to distract business from a long view-particularly in developed countries and most particularly in the U.S. A range of three to five years is common, yet this horizon fails to accommodate much more than logistical support. In today's heady environment, firms are meeting their objectives, but will they continue to do so or might they become victims of their own success? From an employee perspective, the planning span is but a sliver of one's full potential-insufficient to effectively nurture talent for career-long productive relationship. The year 2000 problem infers difficulty of a more pragmatic nature. Existing since the dawn of business computing, the concern of recording year dates with only two digits received little visibility until 1996. Seemingly, problems beyond a four-year window cannot yet be big ones-odd that we plan for shorter periods than we borrow for.
Cursed Incrementalism
Short planning windows do little to instill broad understanding of market and technology dynamics. Boldness in the march for quarterly figures is usually not much more than trimmed staffing and expenses and restructuring. Operationally, most decisions center on process tweaking. Little initiatives yielding little successes are habit-forming, but continuously pursuing little gains can sometimes over- look larger fundamentals.
Markets change profoundly when a new player captures the market with significantly better and/or cheaper product. Sometimes economies just go sour for a while. At that point there is a tendency to copy competition. Imitation may be flattery, but it is not the same as understanding. The likely risk is that tweaking and reacting chase local optimums at the expense of global ones.
Go Not Lightly
Entering new markets, particularly in wholly new geographic regions, does not lend itself to timidity. Weak efforts fail, but not before money is spent. Serious ventures deserve the foresight and planning to understand the prerequisites to success. Particularly in the framework of business partnerships where extensive investment human and capital resources is involved, a visible resolve to succeed together does much to support a continuing relationship. The strength of a partnership is as evident in the marketplace as it is among its employees. As with any competitive business, continued success hinges upon the strength of every individual in its workforce. People are the central resource, and education plays a central role in preparing them.
Ideal Constraints
Global ventures and distance education go hand-in-hand. Integrated global operation is dependent upon the ability to communicate and work effectively at distance and across boundaries. One might take a look-ahead perspective and postulate what tools and methods will evolve from current technologies and practices in business and education. This scenario should work for the near term, but such forecasting may be a distraction.
A more interesting consideration is to assume that technology will serve all future communications needs-whether strategy and operations, or teaching and learning. Now one can get past evolutionary details and ponder ideal structures for global business, virtual enterprise, and education. This may mean looking way ahead, but it does center thought on what is desired rather than on what is possible. What needs exist for education?
If you are planning for one year, grow rice.
If you are planning for 20 years, grow trees.
If you are planning for centuries, grow men.
-Old Chinese proverb