Changing Contours Of Competition : Its Not History, Geography Or Capital

The changing contours of globalization, technology and demographics characterizes the changing nature of the world. Robert Reich writes that The nationality of the corporation is becoming less relevant. Far more relevant are the skill sets of the people within a geographic area or nation, and their capacity to continuously add greater and greater value. Companies are rapidly going global. Companies are selling and marketing abroad, and producing and manufacturing abroad. They are parking their savings abroad too; they are becoming global in terms of being global investors. The competitiveness of any place in the world, including a place called the United States, depends less and less on the profitability of companies headquartered in that location, and more and more on the capacity of the people that live there to add value to this increasingly integrated global economy. More Americans are working for companies that are headquartered outside the U.S. He expects that in the US, the demand for IT professionals shall continue to exceed supply and warns that it's going to be harder and harder to get the quality of IT professional that American business needs. The future areas of application of IT shall be in the area of "relational capital" to leverage the relationships across various people inside organizations. Companies need to utilize IT so that everyone in an organization can take maximum advantage of everybody else. As other entry barriers are dropping so fast, we need IT systems that rapidly connect the right people to each other so that there are real synergies.

Its clear – seeing from the advancements in the workplace in the coming years, with advances of technology and globalization taking more roots, location where work gets done may not matter at all – the core differentiation between organizations may boil down to talent levels inside organizations. Clearly the human capital and assets of an organization shall provide the winning edge – its not history, geography or capital.