Perception is a funny thing. How one person sees something can be completely different to someone else. The most interesting thing is how we see ourselves. Australia for example is seen as the lucky country, rich in resources, great people, great food, great land and yet we are really quite isolated to the rest of the world. Our country is isolated and this may affect how we see ourselves and how we conduct business. Our political system is one of Local, State and Federal. These levels are intertwined but very rarely do they communicate effectively with one another. Information can easily get doubled up as one level researches something that another level has already researched. I brought this up recently with Kate Crawford who has a wide experience in the creative use of new information technologies to expand peoples ability to meet their needs and create new more sustainable ways of doing things. Her answer to me was 'open information, real open information.
I would like to add that the information needs to be short and to the point. No one wants to read 300 pages of waffle.
Currently China is again opening up the Silk road with it's 'One belt, One road' policy. This means that China is opening up trade and communication with the countries close to their borders and along the old Silk Road. China for many years was internal looking and now it's opening up to it's neighbours. They are expanding trade with nations big an small with in their community.
The current change in business sees organisation like Alibaba or Airbnb become $400 billion dollar companies because they take advantage of exponential market share. For example take a checker board. Imagine that's the earth. In the first box you tell one person about your product. In the next box there are two of you that tell two more about your product. In the next box there are 4 of you that tell 4 others about your product. If you keep doubling until you reach the last box you have nearly reached every one on earth.
So there is a shift in market perception. You reach out to the people around you and then they reach out to the people around them. You do this with the internet and social media. Australia would not be so isolated if we do this. We need to reach out to the countries that are not to far from our boarders. We need to communicate and trade with them much more than we currently do. We should not discriminate between the small countries and the large. We should not only concentrate on one large country when there are a wealth of smaller countries that are advancing much quicker than we are because they value innovation, science, technology and investment into research and design more than we do. To this end we should embrace the new age of technology that is driving the surge in giant global companies that use current internet capabilities to market to the whole world, not just the physical radius around their physical head quarters. The great thinker and scientist Dr. Michio Kaku visited Australia last year and the first message that came out of his mouth was:
'You can cut the Science budget, but you will pay a price, 'What is the price? Poverty,' 'Commodities will be important, but they mean less in the future.' 'More and more value will come not from commodity but from the mind.' 'We need to encourage young people to leap into the forefront of intellectual capitalism.'
Australia did indeed cut our Science budget.
So do you think it is time to change our perception of ourselves? For our future. I think maybe it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment