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Chandran Nair
Geopolitics and Security for the Meeting Planning Industry
Asia is recognised as one of the most dynamic region in the world today. The rules of business are being rewritten as economic power shifts from West to East. Future markets and customers are not what they used to be. Leaders will require a global mindset if they want to develop strategies for effective communication in multi-cultural environments. To capture the attention of global leaders it is essential that a dialogue that includes fresh perspectives from developing within an Asian context is initiated. The meeting industry needs to reflect this and provide business with a more honest view of the rapid changes taking place from an Asian perspective.
Most forums on Asia are still designed around a Western narrative, seen through a Western lens, interest and even values. This is still the case when speakers are drawn from all over the world, including Asia. The World Economic Forum meet in Davos, The United Nations meets in New York, the International Women's Forum on Advancing Leadership hosts in and around North America. Where Asian speakers are involved they invariably fall in to predictable categories and typically cheerleaders of current economic orthodoxy.
Many Asian intellectuals, businesses and politicians are seeking platforms to voice more frank opinions and the planning industry needs to take this into account to facilitate debates and discussions on economics, politics and society that are grounded in Asian perspectives. With geopolitical and economic shifts there is now an urgency to shift perceptions. To overcome possible stalemates in solutions to macroeconomic issues global leaders need to develop multi-dimensional approaches and perceptions. Without creating a platform and a genuine attempt to engage with Asian leaders willing to speak openly then global issues such as, politics, trade and economics will continue to be one-dimensional.
Chandran Nair is the author of Consumptionomics: Asia's role in reshaping capitalism and saving the planet, and is the CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow a social ventures think tank based in Hong Kong, which he founded in 2005.
See Chandran's full speaker profile here. |
Haiyan Wang
Cultivating a
Global Mindset:
Meeting Planning in the Emerging Era
The rise of China and India and other emerging markets have profoundly changed the global economic structure. Over the next two decades, 75% of the growth in the world economy will be from the emerging economies. For virtually every medium-sized to large company, market opportunities, critical resources, cutting-edge ideas, and competitors lurk not just around the corner in the home market but increasingly in distant and often little-understood regions of the world as well.
How successful a company is at exploiting emerging opportunities and tackling accompanying challenges depends crucially on how intelligent it is at observing and interpreting the dynamic world. Cultivating a global mindset is one of the central ingredients required for building such intelligence. Meeting planners can and must help their organizations grasp the magnitude and pace of change and the multifaceted nature of the new global reality. Aside from incorporating emerging market topics and expertise in the agenda, holding meetings in emerging markets can provide executives on-the-ground deeper learning and stimulate out-of-the-box thinking.
Haiyan Wang is Managing Partner of the China India Institute, a Washington, DC - based research and consulting organization with a focus on creating winning global strategies that leverage the transformational rise of China and India.
Read her speaker profile here.
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Peter Navarro
What to Know As You Implement Your Corporate Strategies
It's been a long time since we've had a solid economic expansion and bull market in the United States. The question, of course, is how long it will last. The biggest obstacle to a sustained U.S. recovery is a weak consumer sector. Unemployment and stagnant wages do not a long term recovery make. So watch that sector very carefully.
Internationally, the biggest question mark is China. As it tightens interest rates will this halt China's double digit growth? If so, will this drag Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan along with the commodity countries, e.g., Australia, Brazil, Russia? Longer term, higher commodity prices foreshadow a possible stagflationary scenario. Is it strong demand driving these prices - or simply the easy money, weak dollar policies of the U.S. Fed. These are just some of the factors to watch as you implement your corporate strategies, restructure your financial market portfolios, and position your company for slow, medium to high growth. So learn to be your own economic forecasting and follow the markets!
Peter Navarro is a business professor at the University of California-Irvine. He is the author of the ground-breaking management book, The Well-Timed Strategy, and the bestselling investment book If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks. His most recent work is titled Always a Winner: Finding Your Competitive Advantage in an Up and Down Economy.
Learn more about Peter Navarro by clicking here.
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Peter Zeihan
A Geopolitical Analysis
Peter Zeihan is Stratfor's Vice President of Analysis, and as such he is responsible for transforming the raw output of the private intelligence company's network of sources into regional and global forecasts. In his role as a presenter of the company's findings, he regularly addresses a variety of financial, industrial and government audiences. Here are a few examples of what your organization should know about the changing geopolitical landscape:
Tomorrow's Depression?
The global population is getting older and will within a generation begin to shrink. That simple fact -- once dismissed as lunacy -- will reconstruct every economic relationship on the planet. The process will be as unprecedented as it will be steeped in misery, but there will be winners among the carnage.
Seeking a Balance in the Persian Gulf
The United States is embroiled in a number of conflicts in the Muslim world, and how it extracts itself from them will determine much about the structure of global power over the next generation. But before one can go forward, one must first revisit why the United States invaded Iraq in the first place, as it holds the clue to the future of the American relationship with Iran and Saudi Arabia, and with it the future of both the region and the United States.
The Coming Asian Collapses
The entire basis of the Asian economic model is founded on two principles: an isolated financial system that capitalizes on below market-rate funds, and unlimited access to the American market. As Japan and Indonesia have already proved, the first principle is unstable. And as the Americans are about to prove, the second is unreliable. Japan and China -- and likely several of the Southeast Asian states -- are not simply flirting with catastrophe, they are destined for it. The real secret is that they know it already.
The Russian Resurgence
In the 1990s the West became convinced it had buried the Soviet threat for all time. The Soviets may be gone, but the Russians have since recovered and have reestablished themselves as a regional hegemon. Driven by the horrors of their past and their fears of their future, today's Moscow is pushing out along old vectors to rebuild its security. But by definition where Russia is secure, others are not.
See Peter Zeihan's full bio and video here. |
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informative speakers on economics and the changing international political landscape.