AMR Research CEO Tony Friscia.
BOSTON--Emerging markets will be found in BRIC. That's Brazil, Russia, India, and China.
And unless companies start thinking and operating more collectively and less individualistically, they will not survive--let alone thrive on-- this change.
That was the message given to a group of CIOs, CEOs, and other executives at AMR Research's Executive Leadership Conference 2007 on Tuesday.
Major challenges facing companies in the emerging BRIC-driven world economy will be how to manage data, and how to mobilize a skilled G6 workforce from one currently made up of aging skilled workers getting ready to retire and young unskilled workers.
AMR President and CEO Tony Friscia said that just like former Senator Bill Bradley speaks of "The New American Story" in his latest book of the same name, there is, too, a "New IT Story." It's one of not just globalization, but of collectiveness among teams of different cultures and backgrounds within that globalized company.
In addition to an investment in education to produce more skilled workers, companies will have to rely on a collaboration of talent with the workforce they do have even among competitors, customers and suppliers. The emergency response of stop, drop and react that companies had when they had to set aside emergency corporate funds to quickly comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is not going to work for this next issue.
Thomas Friedman's prediction of the world being flat is already happening. The barriers have already been broken and the world will continue to flatten with the emergence of these four economic powers, according to Lee Geishecker, vice president at AMR Research .
"Global means not just doing business in more than one country, but understanding localization, languages and cultures," said Lee Geishecker, vice president of AMR Research.
The 'New IT Story' says be as one. It's the only way to survive this world of continuous change going forward. Just like Bradley tells Americans they need to write their own destiny together, so do corporations looking to stay cutting edge and economical viable in the face of the new emerging world economic powers, according to both Friscia and Geishecker.
But dealing with the changes outside, will have to start with a change of thinking inside a company, according to Friscia.
My teenage daughters don't think of technology as a category within their lives, but as another thing that's incorporated into it. Corporations can't have an IT box that is kept separate. The CIO can't be thought of as only having a supporting role, he said.
