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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
Your guide to understanding the basics of an MBA Want to get an MBA? The Complete MBA For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is the practical, plain-English guide that covers all the basics of a top-notch MBA program, helping you to navigate today's most innovative business strategies. From management to entrepreneurship to strategic planning, you'll understand the hottest trends and get the latest techniques for motivating employees, building global partnerships, managing risk, and manufacturing. This fun, easy-to-access guide is full of useful information, tips, and checklists that will help you lead, manage, or participate in any business at a high level of competence. You'll find out how to use databases to your advantage, recognize and reward your employees, analyze financial statements, and understand the challenges of strategic planning in a global business environment. You'll also learn the basic principals of accounting, get a grip on the concepts behind stocks and bonds, and find out how technology has revolutionized everything from manufacturing to marketing. Discover how to: * Know and respond to your customers' needs * Handle budgets and forecasts * Recruit and retain top people * Establish and run employee teams * Use Sarbanes-Oxley to your company's advantage * Negotiate with the best of them * Build long-term relationships with clients * Avoid common managerial mistakes * Improve cash flow * Market your products and services * Make the most of your advertising dollar Once you know what an MBA knows, the sky's the limit. Read The Complete MBA For Dummies, 2nd Edition, and watch your career take off!
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
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Complete MBA For Dummies
by Kathleen Allen, PhD,USC Marshall Business School and Peter Economy
Coauthor, Managing For Dummies, 2nd Edition, and Building Your Own Home For Dummies
Complete MBA For Dummies®, 2nd EditionPublished byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, 317-572-3447, fax 317-572-4355, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2007941221
ISBN: 978-0-470-19429-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Authors
Kathleen R. Allen, PhD, is the author of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management, 3rd Ed., Launching New Ventures, 5th Ed., Bringing New Technology to Market, and Growing and Managing an Entrepreneurial Business, as well as several other trade books. As a Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, based in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, Allen has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs start their ventures. At USC, she’s also director of the Marshall Center for Technology Commercialization, where she works with scientists and engineers to help bring their inventions to market. As an entrepreneur herself, Allen has co-founded four companies and is presently the co-founder and president of N2TEC Institute, which is dedicated to technology-based economic development in rural areas of the United States (www.n2tec.org). Allen holds a PhD from USC, an MBA, and a master’s degree in Romance Languages.
Peter Economy (La Jolla, CA) is Associate Editor for the Apex Award–winning magazine Leader to Leader, a member of the National Advisory Council of the Creativity Connection of the Arts and Business Council of Americans for the Arts, a member of the board of directors of SPORTS for Exceptional Athletes (www.s4ea.org), and bestselling co-author of The SAIC Solution: How We Built an $8 Billion Employee-Owned Technology Company. He has also worked on more than 30 other books, including Managing For Dummies, 2nd Ed., The Management Bible,Enterprising Nonprofits: A Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurs, and Writing Children’s Books For Dummies. Peter invites you to visit him at his Web site: www.petereconomy.com.
Dedication
To the visionary business people who are infusing the entrepreneurial spirit into organizations –– here, and around the world.
Authors’ Acknowledgments
We would like to give our sincere thanks and appreciation to our talented publishing team at Wiley –– particularly Joyce Pepple, Stacy Kennedy, Chad Sievers, and Josh Dials. Kathleen would like to thank her husband John and kids Rob, Jaime, and Greg, who have always been champs about putting up with an author in the house. Peter would like to thank his wife Jan and kids Peter, Sky, and Jackson, for being a constant source of wonder, love, and amusement, as well as his mother Betty Economy for helping to pay for his MBA courses. Will the circle be unbroken?
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development
Project Editor: Chad R. Sievers
(Previous Edition: Tim Gallan)
Acquisitions Editor: Stacy Kennedy
Copy Editor: Josh Dials
(Previous Edition: Tina Sims)
Editorial Program Coordinator: Erin Calligan Mooney
Technical Editor: Matthew Will, PhD, MBA
Editorial Manager: Michelle Hacker
Editorial Assistants: Joe Niesen, LeeAnn Harney
Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)
Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees
Layout and Graphics: Reuben W. Davis, Melissa K. Jester, Barbara Moore, Christine Williams
Anniversary Logo Design: Richard Pacifico
Proofreader: Tricia Liebig
Indexer: Broccoli Information Management
Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies
Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies
Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director, Consumer Dummies
Kristin A. Cocks, Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies
Michael Spring, Vice President and Publisher, Travel
Kelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel
Publishing for Technology Dummies
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User
Composition Services
Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
Contents
Title
Introduction
About This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
What You’re Not to Read
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organized
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I : The New, Improved World of Business
Chapter 1: The MBA in a Nutshell
Do You Really Need an MBA?
Exploring the New World of Business
Managing and Motivating an Engaged Workforce
One Part of Business Hasn’t Changed: Money
Reaching Out to Customers
The Rest of Your MBA Syllabus
Chapter 2: Today’s Hottest Business Trends
The World Really Is Flat!
Do It Yourself: User-Generated Everything
Do It for Others: Becoming Socially Responsible
The Changing Workforce: Harnessing the Power of the Millennials
Chapter 3: Entrepreneurship for Everyone
Understanding the Importance of Entrepreneurship
Thinking as an Entrepreneur
Finding an Opportunity
Testing a New Business Idea
Corporate Venturing: An Oxymoron?
Chapter 4: Global Business: Fun and Profit in Katmandu
Going Global Is No Longer a Choice
Spinning the Globe: Where to Begin?
Understanding the Role of Foreign Agents and Other International Types
Considering the Price of Global Growth
Knowing Where to Go for Help
Chapter 5: Polish Your Crystal Ball for Some Strategic Planning
Comparing Strategy and Tactics
Scanning the New Business Horizon
Designing Your Strategy Right the First Time
Something New: Strategic Improvising
Employing a SWOT Analysis
Planning for Success with Operational Innovation
Measuring Strategic Planning Success
Part II : Managing a Business in the New World
Chapter 6: Managing Is Hard; Leading Is Even Harder
Understanding What Managers Do
Highlighting the Differences between Managers and Leaders
Getting Work Done through Others
Designing a Better Organization
Creating a Culture of Innovation
Ethics: Following Your Business Compass
Examining Management Trends in Business Today
Chapter 7: Carrots and Sticks: The ABCs of Motivating Employees
Grasping the Theories of Motivation
You Get What You Reward
Chapter 8: Hiring and Firing: How to Get Good Employees and Keep Them
Hiring and Keeping the Very Best Employees
Disciplining (and Perhaps Terminating) Deserving Employees
I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)
Chapter 9: One for All and All for One: Building Teams That Really Work
The Construction and Evolution of the Team
Empowering Employees
Setting Goals and Monitoring Progress
Conducting Better Business Meetings
Part III : Money: What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You
Chapter 10: All You Ever Wanted to Know about Accounting
Grasping the Basics of Accounting
Understanding Budgets and Estimates
Keeping Your Eye on the Numbers
The Lowdown on Sarbanes-Oxley
Chapter 11: Working Your Way through Financial Statements
Financial Statements Are Your Friends
Taking a Snapshot: The Balance Sheet
Making Money: The Income Statement
Keeping Your Business Afloat: The Cash-Flow Statement
Chapter 12: Deciphering the Mysteries of Financial Planning and Analysis
Manage Your Finances (Before They Manage You!)
Identifying Financial Tricks of the Trade
Analyzing Investment Risk
Reading an Annual Report: A How-To
Chapter 13: Understanding Stocks and Bonds
Grasping the Secondary Market
Understanding Stocks
Investing in Stocks
Joining Forces: Mutual Funds
Bonds: When Debt Makes Sense
Should I Get Investment Help?
Chapter 14: It Takes Money to Make Money
How Much Money Do You Really Need? Setting Up Your Funding Plan
Acquiring First-Stage Money
Finding Second-Stage (or Expansion) Financing
Forming a Strategic Partnership to Access Growth Capital
Part IV : Marketing in the New World
Chapter 15: You Are Nothing without a Customer
Identifying Your Customers and Their Needs
Eyeing Key Trends in Marketing
Creating a Marketing Plan
Defining Your Target Market
Market Research Made Easy and Fun
You Can’t Be an MBA without Knowing the Five Ps
Chapter 16: Getting Noticed with Advertising and Promotion
Eyeing the Basics of Advertising
Publicizing and Promoting Your Products and Services
Grabbing Consumers’ Attention with Special Events and Premiums
Chapter 17: Navigating the New World of Selling
Build Relationships: Forget the Hard Sell
Telemarketing: Dialing for Dollars
Selling on the Web
Doing Business with Other Businesses
CRM: Getting a Handle on Your Contacts
Keeping Your Best Customers
Part V : Other Important Stuff
Chapter 18: Manufacturing and Distribution: It’s a Brave New World
Manufacturing Today Is a New Game
Purchasing: When, Where, and How Much
Managing Materials and Scheduling Production
Production: Building the Product
Quality: It Isn’t Right Until It’s Right
Process/Equipment Maintenance: Keeping the System Running Smoothly
Distribution and Logistics: A Great Way to Compete
Chapter 19: The Ins and Outs of Risk Management
The 4-1-1 on Risk Management
Managing Risk (Before It Manages You)
Purchasing Insurance to Shift the Risk
Training Employees to Minimize Risk
New Technology, New Risks: Internet and E-mail Threats
Chapter 20: In Business, Everything Is Negotiation
Ready to Rumble: Negotiation 101
Sizing Up Any Deal’s Critical Elements
Let’s Make a Deal: How to Play the Game
Chapter 21: Econ 101: The Basics of Economics
Why Adam Smith Knew What He Was Talking About
Poring Over Fundamental Economic Questions
What Some Key Economic Concepts Mean to You
Part VI : The Part of Tens
Chapter 22: Ten Biggest Mistakes Managers Make
Taking Employees for Granted
Taking Customers for Granted
Failing to Lead
Not Setting Clear Goals with Employees
Forgetting What It’s Like to Be a Worker
Stealing the Spotlight
Sidestepping Opportunities to Delegate
Communicating Too Little, Too Late
Hiring Too Fast (And Firing Too Slow)
Forgetting to Have Fun
Chapter 23: Ten Effective Ways to Market Your Products and Services
Build Trust with Your Customers
Tell an Interesting Story
Become Effective at Web Content
Utilize Affiliate Marketing
Consider Mobile Marketing
Give Your Product Away
Make Customers Your Marketing Stars
Build Relationships, Not Sales
Get Your Customers Emotionally Involved
Go Local in a Global World
Chapter 24: Ten (Or So) Steps to Improve Your Cash Flow
Manage Your Accounts Receivable
Require Instant (Or Advance) Payment
Accept and Encourage Credit Card Use
Hold Onto Your Money
Make Sure Your Invoices Are Correct
Give Prompt-Payment Discounts
Follow Up on Late Payments
Keep Track of Your Expenses
Introduction
Whether you work for a corporation, a nonprofit organization, or for the government, chances are you’ve considered getting — or have already obtained — a Masters of Business Administration degree, an MBA. Why? Because if you want to get ahead in your organization — or just to do a better job of managing or leading — obtaining an MBA is the best ticket in town. Studies show that MBA graduates — particularly those from the top business schools — are offered significantly higher starting salaries than their counterparts who don’t have MBAs. And that effect carries on throughout the careers of these MBAs.
But is it the degree that makes the difference, or is something else at work here? Although that piece of paper with your name and the words “Masters of Business Administration” would mean a lot, what is even more important are the things you’d learn during the course of your MBA studies. Complete MBA For Dummies, 2nd Edition, presents and explains some of the same information that you’d encounter in a typical MBA program in any high-quality business school. Strategic planning, management, accounting, finance, marketing, negotiation — you’ll find the key points here.
As you browse this book, keep one thing in mind: There isn’t a monopoly of business skill and talent at the top levels of an organization. Indeed, employees at all levels can (and today are often expected to) play active roles in running their organizations. You can find engaged businesspeople in every part of today’s dynamic organization.
The bottom line: This book provides you with the very best ideas, concepts, and tools taught in today’s top business schools. If you apply them, we’re sure that you’ll see a noticeable difference in your everyday business dealings — a difference that will make you and your business partners even more successful in the future.
About This Book
Complete MBA For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is full of useful information, tips, and checklists that will help anyone who aspires to lead, manage, or participate in a business at a high level of competence. Your current level of leadership and management experience doesn’t matter. For a fraction of the amount you’d pay to get your MBA, we provide you with an easily understandable roadmap to navigate today’s most innovative and effective business techniques and strategies. And if you already have your MBA, you’ll find that this book is a handy refresher and reference guide that you can carry with you wherever you go.
More good news is that the information you find within the covers of this book is firmly grounded in the real world. It isn’t an abstract collection of theoretical mumbo-jumbo that sounds good but doesn’t work when you put it to the test. No, we’ve culled the best information, the best strategies, and the best techniques — the same ones that professors teach in today’s top business schools. In short, this book is a toolbox full of solutions to your every business question and problem.
And this book is fun (at least we think so!). Running a business doesn’t have to be a bore. In fact, it can be a lot of fun. We help you to maintain a sense of humor in the face of the challenges that all businesspeople face from time to time. We’re happy to say, though, that there will be many more days when the satisfaction of inspiring a team to develop an innovative new product or service, or hitting a new sales record, will bring you a greater sense of fulfillment than you ever imagined.
Finally, this book will inspire you with stories from some of today’s most innovative and successful businesses — including Amazon.com, Whole Foods Market, MySpace, General Electric Medical Systems, and many more.
Conventions Used in This Book
When writing this book, we included some general conventions that all For Dummies books use. We use the following:
Italics: We italicize any words you may not be familiar with and provide definitions.
Boldface type: We bold all keywords in bulleted lists and the actual steps in numbered lists.
Monofont: All Web sites and e-mail addresses appear in monofont.
What You’re Not to Read
Ideally we want you to read every single word that we’ve written, but we’re also realists. We know that you’re very busy and only have time to read just what you need. In that case feel free to skip the sidebars — the shaded text boxes full of anecdotes and examples. Although they’re interesting reads, if you do skip them you won’t miss anything essential.
Foolish Assumptions
As we wrote this book, we made the following assumptions about you, our readers. We assumed that
You’re interested in taking a big step beyond merely going to work — that you really want to learn what business is all about.
You’re willing to change the way you interact with your coworkers and customers, and that you’re ready to try some new techniques that will put you ahead of the competition.
You’re able to make a long-term commitment to becoming a better businessperson.
You’re considering whether an MBA program is right for you and you’re looking at this book to help you make the decision.
How This Book Is Organized
Complete MBA For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is organized into six parts. Each part addresses a major area of the hows, whats, and whys of becoming a leader. Because of this organization, it’s simple to find the topic that you’re looking for. Whatever the topic, you can bet that we cover it someplace! Here’s a quick overview of what you can find in each part.
Part I: The New, Improved World of Business
Business today is changing at a record pace, and the best and most effective businesspeople are changing with it. In this part, we consider what business looks like today, and we take a very close look at the forces that have come together to flatten the world. Entrepreneurship seems to be on everyone’s mind today and the tales of successful (and not so successful) entrepreneurs are in the daily news. We give you a good grounding in entrepreneurship concepts that can help you no matter what your career is. We also consider the global business environment and discuss the hows and whys of strategic planning.
Part II: Managing a Business in the New World
A working knowledge of the nuts and bolts of how to manage an organization and the people within it is still a very important part of business success. In this part, we outline the difference between managing and leading an organization, and we discuss the latest trends in leadership. We look at how to best motivate and reward employees and how to recruit and retain only the very best people. We also examine one of the most important tools in business today: employee teams.
Part III: Money: What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You
As the saying goes, money makes the world go ’round. Nowhere is this saying more true than in business. Understanding where a business’s money comes from — and where it goes — is important knowledge for any businessperson to possess. In this part, we present the basics of accounting and take a look at the most important and widely used financial statements. We decipher the mysteries of financial analysis and help you understand the ins and outs of stocks and bonds. Finally, we cover what it actually takes to make money.
Part IV: Marketing in the New World
A business with no customers is not a business. Customers are the focus of every successful business, so finding new ways to grab their attention and build long-term relationships is a topic of great importance. In this part, we explore how to understand your customers’ needs and how to provide world-class customer service. We discuss the best approaches to developing a marketing plan, and we take an in-depth look at advertising and promotion — particularly the world of new media brought about by the Internet and the tools that let users become marketers.
Part V: Other Important Stuff
One of the most interesting things about leading, managing, or working in a business is that every day brings something new to learn or do. In this part, we take a look at a variety of important business topics. We discuss manufacturing, distribution, and service — and how the latest technology has had a major impact on each. We explore the most important concepts of risk management. We reveal the secrets of successful negotiation, and we review everyone’s favorite business topic: economics.
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Here, in a concise and lively set of condensed chapters, you find tips that will help you to quickly become an effective participant in any organization. We show you how to avoid the most common mistakes that managers make, the best ways to market your products and services, how to improve your cash flow, and the best business resources out there so you can continue your binge learning.
Icons Used in This Book
We place little pictures, called icons, next to blocks of text throughout the book. Here’s what they mean:
This text presents good ideas, tricks, or shortcuts that can save you time and trouble in the business world.
This information is important enough to remember, even if you forget everything else!
This information can help you avoid disasters that could cost you both time and money, not to mention your job.
Where to Go from Here
Although this book is overflowing with useful advice and information, it’s presented in a fun, easy-to-access format. What good is all the information in the world if you can’t get to it quickly and easily? Have no fear; we’ve designed this book with you, the reader, in mind. If you want to find out about a specific area — such as recognizing and rewarding your employees or understanding financial statements — you can check the table of contents and flip to the proper section to get your answers quickly.
If you’re new to business — perhaps a new employee, supervisor, or manager — you may want to start at the beginning and work your way through to the end. A crash course in business! A wealth of information and practical advice awaits you. If you already have plenty of business experience under your belt and you’re short on time (and what businessperson isn’t?), you may want to turn to a particular topic to address a specific need or question.
Regardless of how you navigate this book, we’re sure that you’ll enjoy reading it. If you have any specific questions or comments, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us at http://marshall.usc.edu/entrepreneur(Kathleen) or www.petereconomy.com (Peter).
Part I
The New, Improved Worldof Business
In this part . . .
Today’s increasingly global marketplace is in a constant state of change. Because of this, in this part — after a quick overview of the book’s contents — we consider what business looks like today, and we take a very close look at the forces that have come together to flatten the world. We explore the role of entrepreneurship in the economy. Finally, we span the global business environment and discuss the hows and whys of strategic planning.
Chapter 2
Today’s Hottest Business Trends
In This Chapter
Understanding the flat world of business
Getting a grip on user-generated content
Becoming socially responsible
Embracing and motivating the changing workforce
Business owners and managers live in a very exciting time. Every day brings new surprises, because no matter where you live and do business in the world, change is taking place — and not incrementally, so you can get comfortable with it. Change is happening radically — almost overnight — in ways that most businesses aren’t prepared for.
What is going on? Less than a decade into a new century, change is happening faster than the business world can keep up with it. Adapting to change is a way of life in the business world, and one of the best ways for owners and managers to prepare for the changes that are bound to crop up in the future is to become more aware of the phenomenon of trends. Trends are patterns that we observe in the world around us, and which may signal that a major change is about to occur. In this chapter, we examine many of the key trends that affect how all businesses operate today.
The World Really Is Flat!
Thomas Friedman discusses trends and changes in his best-selling book, The World Is Flat (Picador), which is really an instructional manual for understanding what’s going on in the business world today. By “flat,” Friedman isn’t referring to the physical nature of the planet (in Columbus’s time, the world was physically flat — at least that’s what they thought), but rather to the global marketplace. Technological advances and the Internet have leveled the competitive landscape so that anyone anywhere can compete — the good, the bad, and the ugly can all get into the game. This section delves deeper into why today’s business world is flat and what that means to you, the business person.
From outsourcing to insourcing: Listing the flattening factors
According to Friedman, human history has seen three major periods of globalization:
1. The first period started with Columbus’s trip to the New World and was characterized by demonstrations of power and imperialism.
2. The second period began in about 1800 and went to 2000. This period was exemplified by the growth of multinational companies and the decline in transportation and communication costs, which enabled goods to be traded globally more affordably than ever before.
3. The third period — going on now — is about shrinking the planet, flattening it, and giving individuals the power to compete and collaborate on a global level.
Friedman also named ten factors that have brought about this flattening of the world in the third period:
1.The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989: Tipped the balance of power toward democracies and free markets — that’s good for business!
2.Netscape’s public offering in 1995: Brought the Internet to the masses and made it possible for companies such as Amazon, Google, and eBay to start and grow to an enormous size.
3.Workflow software: Enabled communication and collaboration worldwide — that’s why you can now work from home (called telecommuting).
4.Open Source software: Inspired self-organizing teams and community collaboration around a common objective.
5.Outsourcing: Enhanced the economies of developing countries by giving companies a way to reduce their cost of doing some business functions such as manufacturing.
6.Moving offshore: Increased the ability to compete globally as companies began putting offices and plants in other countries.
7.Global supply chains: Connected the world in a massive value chain.
8.Insourcing: Made it possible for small businesses to gain the competencies of much larger companies.
9.Web search engines: Brought information to anyone, anywhere, any time.
10.Digital and wireless: Enabled 24/7 connectivity and virtual collaboration.
Many of these flatteners have been around for a long time. Individually, each is powerful, but it’s the convergence of these ten at this point in time that has created sufficient critical mass to flatten the world, making everything and everyone accessible to anyone.
And what does a flattened world look like? Friedman talks about visiting Bangalore, India, and being startled by Pizza Hut billboards; glass-and-steel buildings with familiar names such as Texas Instruments, IBM, and Microsoft; and people who speak English with a perfect California accent (if such a thing exists).
Hello, neighbor: When did China move in next door?
By taking advantage of technology and the Internet, China has moved from being a third-world country to growing faster than any other modern economy. In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) — a significant event because it signaled that China was willing to acknowledge and follow global rules of trade.
So, how did China begin growing so fast? It opened the floodgates for offshoring — moving manufacturing plants from their home sites (for example, Europe or the United States) and plopping them down, lock, stock, and barrel, in China. Why? Because in China, you can (for now at least) produce products using cheaper labor, lower taxes, lower healthcare costs, lower energy costs, and far-less restrictive environmental regulations. Because China is such an attractive place to offshore, countries are clamoring to jump on the bandwagon and offer similar incentives — countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, and Mexico.
If you’re in business today, you have some important objectives: Figure out what you can outsource to China, what you can do in China via offshoring, and what you can buy from China in terms of low-cost goods and services. In a flat world, you can no longer afford to do business on your own, and you can’t ignore your neighbors. (Check out Chapter 4 for more advice about doing business in China.)
Googlevision: Searching everywhere for Waldo
Thanks to Internet sensation Google (the 800-pound gorilla of search engines), anyone in the world with an Internet connection can find pretty much anything they want to find. Suppose you don’t have time to go to the grocery store and you have to cook a meal with only the products you have on hand. Simply do a Google search using those items — milk, eggs, broccoli, tuna — in any one of a hundred languages and voila! You’ll have a list of recipes containing those four items.
Today anyone can create their own sources of information, entertainment, and knowledge in the most obscure areas possible, and then they can distribute them to audiences of millions with equal ease.
The reason that Google surpasses everyone else when it comes to search capability is that it goes beyond mere keyword search. Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed an algorithm (a fancy word for a mathematical formula that solves a specific problem) that ranks a Web page by the number of other Web pages that link to it. Using this algorithm, users always get the pages most relevant to their searches first. Then Brin and Page went one step further and linked users with advertisers that have products and services directly related to those searches.
Search engines aren’t the only technology that enables users to find what they want more easily. With digital video recorders (DVR) such as TiVo, you can pause and replay live television, letting you decide what you want to watch and, more importantly, when.
The dark side of the search trend is the ability of anyone to find out information about you. Yes, that’s right. Your reputation, words, and behaviors follow you wherever you go. In these days of Facebook, MySpace, and other social-networking Web sites — not to mention Google — this can be a problem for job seekers — especially job seekers who have lived, shall we say, colorful lives and choose to display them in public forums.
Turnabout: When little businesses get big businesses to work for them
Big businesses working for little businesses? That’s right. Freidman calls this phenomenon insourcing and it has taken the traditional outsourcing model to a whole new level. Outsourcing is hiring someone else to do the business functions that you don’t want to do or for which you don’t have expertise. So you may outsource human resource activities such as payroll and hiring to a firm that specializes in these tasks. With insourcing,on the other hand, your outsourced partner becomes an integral part of your business.
Suppose your company produces unusual pieces of furniture that customers can’t find anywhere else in the world. Your potential to sell worldwide, using the power of the Internet to get your message out, is huge. Logistics is the problem, and you have no idea how to begin. You can start by securing the help of an international shipping company, such as UPS Store, that can work with you to find the best packaging for your product and the best vendors to supply those packaging materials. Then UPS slaps smart labels on your packages so it can track them anywhere in its delivery area (which is likely to be worldwide in today’s business environment). It also works with customs officials and makes sure your packages reach their destinations.
To achieve that level of collaboration with you, UPS gets inside your business to really understand how it operates. UPS may even help you redesign your production processes to make them more efficient. In fact, some companies never even touch their products; they just let third-party insourcing firms do all the work — sometimes even warranty repairs.
The basis for the successful collaborations that occur today (as with the previous example) is trust. To turn over a portion of your business to a supply-chain manager, you have to be sure that the company is reputable and reliable. Ask the company for customer references, check with the Better Business Bureau at www.bbb.org (it provides information on more than 2.5 million companies), and be sure to search online for any possible complaints that a disgruntled customer may have posted on a Web site somewhere.
Do It Yourself: User-Generated Everything
In today’s flat world, people no longer depend on others to provide them with entertainment and information. Rather, when they want something, they create it themselves — everything from promotional videos and independent films to editorials and communities of interest on any topic imaginable. We don’t know anyone who can pinpoint exactly when this phenomenon started, but we can identify a few technologies that converged to help make average Joes and Janes into household names — celebrities, first-class marketers, political pundits, and journalists. The possibilities are endless.
The technologies and related applications that converged to make this possible include the following:
The Internet (no surprise here)
Wireless technology (Apple’s iPhone, global positioning systems [GPS], personal digital assistants [PDAs] — you get the picture)
Low-priced, high-quality video and digital content production technology (Vegas Movie Studio and Adobe Creative)
Advanced search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN)
eBay and PayPal (buy and sell products/services without the need to build retail stores or handle credit cards yourself)
Social media networks (MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube)
Web logs (blogs), podcasts, and vodcasts (technologies that make communication by text, voice, and video interactive)
In the following sections, we look at two key “user-generated” trends that are putting communication power into the hands of anyone with something to say.
Tapping the new opinion leaders
In the past, consumers looked to reputable sources with brand names to get opinions on everything from the best music and films to cars, electronics, and so forth — sources such as MTV for music, Ebert and Roeper for films, Edmunds for cars, and PC Magazine for electronics. Consumers still look to those sources today but in ever-declining numbers. Why? Because peer networks are becoming the trusted sources for critical reviews of products and services.
