Future of Marketing

Future of Marketing

You can find many presentations on marketing including videos on a wide range of related issues on http://www.globalchange.com/ppt/index.htm

Teenagers getting fatter in spite of health drive - Britain - Times Online

Obesity will be a major problem in future not only in wealthy nations, but also in emerging economies among the increasingly affluent.

One third of babies born today in the United States will develop diabetes during their lives as a direct result of being overweight, and obesity is estimated already to cost the US health care system many billions of dollars a year, plus lost productivity to the economy.

Expect to see many innovative approaches by pharmacuetical companies in addition to other control measures by governments such as additional regulations on marketing junk food to children.

Creative solutions could include developing new drugs which are similar to thyroxine. One such compound causes monkeys to lose a significant amount of their body weight on a normal diet in just a couple of weeks, without the normal toxic effects that one might expect on the heart.

Analysts tip oil will push beyond current record - Business - Business

Analysts tip oil will push beyond current record - Business - Business

Some time ago many people predicted that global economic growth would slow significantly if oil prices rose as high as $50 to $60 - and yet little has happened.

Now some are warning of dire consequencies if the oil price were to rise to $100 a barrel.

The fact is that when we allow for inflation, oil is still cheaper than it was at the height of the oil crisis in the 1970s - 30 years ago.

The oil price per barrel would need to be around $90 to equal the real cost then, but other things have changed. In the 1970s many nations had far higher rates of inflation. Today, globalisation and the digital age have resulted in falling prices across a wide range of goods, and have also reduced the costs of many services like banking.

It could be argued that recent oil prices as low as $15 a barrel were highly undesirable for the sustainable future of the earth, encouraging energy waste and making it impossible to develop profitable alternative energy sources.

From that point of view we should welcome higher oil prices, which are already helping stimulate huge new investment into solar, wind, tide, hydroelectric and other generation methods, while also encouraging fresh efforts in energy conservation.

Higher oil prices suck vast amounts of cash out of oil-poor countries into the hands of oil producers, and this is already finding its way quite rapidly back into other economies. Just look for example at the amount of Middle East wealth that is flowing into the real estate markets in Europe, particularly the UK.

There are a large number of new business opportunities that arise from these wealth movements, and of course from energy conservation / alternative power generation.

Human nature - better than we sometimes think?

Comment on the power indviduals have to create damage and chaos - yet how few do so... how most people are responsible, law abiding citizens who respect those around them:

Yes you are right about the asymmetry of antisocial acts in terms of effort for impact - and this has always been a problem for society eg the tiny effort needed to commit arson, or to daub graffiti on walls, or to deliberately drive a car into a bus queue. Yet the strange thing is how rarely these acts happen, and how powerful is the social pressure on people to "behave" in a way that respects community.

The same with theft. It amazes me how few people carrying laptops in their bags, or using them on tube trains, are mugged for what is a very valuable item....

The vast majority of people in every country most of the time act in ways that enhance community.

Most people give time to community causes they believe in, and so on...

Yes the problems of society are huge and growing and the answers are complex, but the innate creativity of human beings and their passion for change should also not be underestimated.

It is indeed the reason why suicide bombers blow themselves up, in a
(misguided) ultruistic belief that the world will be a better place as a result of their "self sacrifice".

The other noteworthy thing is how resilient society is to major shocks.

Take London in the second world war when one in 4 of all homes were rendered unusable because of random rocket attacks. The result? Life went on. That's why we know that a few suicide bombers in London, even if more arrive, cannot possibly alter daily life in a major way. Actually we have lived with terrorism (IRA) in the UK for several decades.

You see the same in war-torn regions of Africa... in the midst of instability and troubles, daily existence for most people usually continues relatively unchanged (compared to what some might imagine).

Latest website updates on future trends

Many new presentations and some new videos

Large number of additional presentations on global trends of all kinds on my website

Deadly bird flu found in Nigeria

It was almost inevitable that bird flu would hit Africa. Containing spread in this continent will be a near impossible task since many countries are very poor with little or no infrastructure to monitor outbreaks, educate people about what to do, or to remunerate them for slaughtering their birds.

WHO Tries to Calm Bird Flu Fears After Turkey Outbreak - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today

WHO Tries to Calm Bird Flu Fears After Turkey Outbreak - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today

The greatest immediate risk is that bird flu will spread into parts of Africa where there is extensive human - bird contact, and very few resources for tracking and elimination of infected birds. This will greatly increase the risk of a human mutation which could result in very rapid spread across human populations.

keynote speech for fujitsusiemans

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China onward march to become world's 6th largest economy

China raised its estimate of output this week by a sixth. The new estimate is based on a nationwide census which means China is now above Italy in sixth place in the world economic rankings of 2004 output, measured in dollars at market exchange rates.

Based on 2005 exchange rate movements and relative growth rates, economists calculate that China has now risen to fourth place, ahead of France and Britain, but behind the US, Japan and Germany.

The revision reflects better information on the services sector and on private firms, unearthed during a survey using 13 million people - one in every 100 Chinese.

London Stock Exchange in yet more discussions about mergers

Almost every week there is another news story about possible consolidation of various national stock exchanges around the world. This is long overdue. Globalisation and the digital economy are making traditional stock exchanges look very out of date.

See Bloomsberg news story below and the comments I made serveral years ago, about likely megers in Europe of national Stock Exchanges.

http://www.globalchange.com/stock.htm

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) London Stock Exchange Plc's biggest shareholder said it won't accept the 1.5 billion-pound takeover bid by a group led by Macquarie Ltd - Australia's largest investment bank.

Sydney-based Macquarie and other investors including Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and Finpro SGPS SA offered 580 pence a share in cash for LSE, below the closing share price of 622 pence a share on Dec. 14.

Convergence: Life after convergence in IT, telecom, consumer behaviour

Life after Convergence - Why so many companies are unprepared
Telecom companies become media houses. Food retailers become online banks. Computers become phones and video stores. However, while we will see convergence in products and services on price, features and quality, we will also see huge new investment in diversity - See article just posted on http://www.globalchange.com/convergence.htm

Bird flu: human pandemic could disrupt a country for more than six months - New Zealand's leading news and information website

Extract from Manawatu Standard New Zealand which indicates how another government is thinking about the threat of bird flu spreading amongst humans. As I have always said, the biggest impact is likely to be from an emotional reaction amongst people at home and at work, which will propel governments to drastic measures such as border closure even where such measures have been largely overtaken by events. The most likely scenario is a mutation into human form of bird flu (100% likely according to the World Health Organisation - only a matter of time) but in a far less dangerous way than worst case scenarios, perhaps with a death toll equivalent to 2-5 times a normal annual flu epidemic.

Text of the news bulletin:


Emergency managers are warning that a bird flu pandemic could last up to six months and people should be prepared to stay indoors that long.


Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management readiness manager Mike O'Leary said a bird flu pandemic could strike in multiple waves, lasting up to six months.

"Three waves of approximately eight weeks each is what we are planning for," Mr O'Leary told Human Resources magazine.

Local Government Online chief executive Jim Higgins said it is rubbish to think a pandemic would last a few days.

". . .I've heard people on television speaking of a pandemic lasting a week or two, and I think, 'That's complete rubbish.' More likely a pandemic is going to last for three to six months, with two or three waves of infection."

Local Government Online would be key to providing information during an pandemic.

New Zealand's existing emergency response planning is for short, sharp disasters, such as earthquakes or floods, with mop-up afterward.

"When you think about all the (emergency response) planning that's been done to date, none of it includes anything about not being able to go outside for an extended period of perhaps three to six months. This threat is unique," Mr Higgins said.

Mr O'Leary also warned New Zealand would largely have to manage alone: "Public expectations will be high that relief will come to them, but there will be no cavalry coming over the horizon."

Bird flu is now only a threat, but health experts are worried that a small mutation of the H5N1 virus could let it transmit between humans, and humans have no natural immunity to it.

Health Ministry senior clinical adviser Andrea Forde said the key to surviving any pandemic will be in how well prepared people are, how quickly people can respond and how soon recovery happens.

A pandemic outbreak would see quarantine measures imposed, closing schools and workplaces to prevent infection from spreading. International borders would also be closed, affecting exports and imports. The experts say it could take months to get business functioning again. Getting back to normal would take longer.

Mr Higgins said businesses had to accept the pandemic is going to happen and to start planning.

"It's not a Y2K scenario. If businesses fail to heed this and do not have contingency plans in place, they will most likely grind to a halt."

Ministry of Economic Development resources and networks director Tony Fenwick said a pandemic would see businesses close either because they had to or through reduced demand.

Key industries must plan now for a pandemic, Mr Fenwick said.

"Undisrupted provision of key infrastructure services, the food-supply chain, the capacity of the health sector, the continued operation of banking-payments systems and the legal system are areas we must focus on," he said.

Mr Higgins said the chance of containing bird flu, as Sars was contained, may be remote because of the more infectious nature of influenza.

". . .so we have to look at ways to ride a pandemic out. One of the best ways to do that will be to limit personal contact," he said.

That means businesses have to immediately start looking at ways staff can work from home. Email and telecommunications will be the top tools to keep functioning.

"This really is the sort of line we have to follow to avoid unnecessary infection."

See also http://www.globalchange.com/birdflu.htm

Villagers blamed for fatal clash in China - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune

News of security forces firing on villagers in China - reported widely. International Herald Tribune reports today from Chinese sources that there have been amaybe round 70,000 protests in China over the last year (but remember there are 1.2 billion people - so the equivalent in the UK would be around 3,000 incidents, still a significant number but nothing like as dramatic). Almost all these protests were resolved peacefully, but in this case things appear to have got out of hand with differing accounts of what happened. Villagers fired off explosive devices - fireworks - which perhaps were mistaken for more serious weaponry. But having said that, firework rockets set off in the direction of armed forces must be considered to be a highly provocative act.

News report from International Herald Tribune is below:

Five days after a fatal assault by security forces put down a demonstration in a village near Hong Kong, the Chinese authorities began Sunday to consolidate an official version of the events, blaming villagers for the violence, but also punishing at least one local commander.

The delayed response by the Chinese government appeared, at least in part, to be part of a carefully measured public relations effort intended to defuse public outrage over the deaths of 20 or more residents of the hamlet, according to villagers' accounts, as well as upholding Beijing's own vision of public order and the "rule of law."

In the first widely circulated account the incident, which occurred in the village of Dongzhou, in southern Guangdong Province, the Xinhua press agency Web site cited the information office of the nearby city of Shanwei, saying that a "chaotic mob" had begun throwing explosives at the police Tuesday night, forcing the police to "open fire in alarm." The report said that three villagers were killed and eight others were injured.

The Chinese news reports said that 170 villagers, led by a few instigators, attacked a local wind power plant as part of their protest against another planned development there, a coal-fired power plant, using knives, blasting caps and Molotov cocktails.

On Sunday, as detailed accounts of the incident given by villagers were being reported in the foreign news media and commented upon in Chinese-language Web sites, the authorities announced the arrest of a local commander who was in charge during the incident. Without naming him, they said he had mishandled the situation under "extremely urgent circumstances."

The Xinhua report did not make clear whether there had been one or more arrests of officers in charge. Villagers interviewed Sunday said they had been told of two arrests.

The official account of the incident, as well as the death toll being reported in the mainland Chinese media, remain at odds with largely concordant accounts of the villagers, dozens of whom have been interviewed since Friday.

According to these accounts, three bodies were taken to a local clinic after the showdown between the protesters and security forces, and another to a hospital in Shanwei, a city about 25 kilometers, or 15 miles, to the north of Dongzhou, which has jurisdiction over the village.

In telephone interviews with villagers on Saturday and Sunday, witnesses spoke repeatedly of an additional seven or eight bodies seen by a roadside near the scene of the violence. Others accounts, given by numerous villagers, spoke of 13 or so bodies floating in the sea after the security forces used automatic weapons on the protesters. The villagers said they had set off fireworks and exploded blasting caps from a distance of more than 90 paces from the massed police and paramilitary forces. Villagers also repeatedly spoke of injured people being approached by security forces and fatally shot at close range.

"There were seven or eight bodies, killed by the spray of gunfire, that fell into a ditch," said one villager, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The next day, going up along the ditch deep into the grass bushes, villagers found up to 10 bodies. Those inside the ditch were taken away and cremated immediately. I saw it while hiding in the grass bush on the mountain. Immediately I felt like crying, it was such a cruel scene."

The villager's account dovetails with that of several other villagers who spoke of bodies by the roadside near a village crossroads. Others spoke of the effort by soldiers to dispose of corpses, keeping villagers at a distance while they burned some of them, and loading others into a minibus, which some villagers said, then took the bodies to a local crematorium for disposal.

Dongzhou residents also said that at least 40 villagers are still unaccounted for, and it is not known whether the missing were killed, arrested or remain in hiding.

If accurate, these accounts suggest a frenzied effort by authorities to maintain an official death toll of about three people, thereby minimizing the importance of the event, which constitutes the greatest known use of force by the Chinese security forces against ordinary citizens since the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing, in 1989.

Villagers said that with security agents still circulating in large numbers, and going from door to door to interrogate residents, some families that had recovered the corpses of their relatives had buried them hastily, and in secret, to avoid their confiscation.

Others said that the police had offered money to those who would surrender their corpses, as well as money for casing from ammunition recovered from the scene. Villagers said that some people had sold their casings, while others had kept them as evidence of the use of force.

The effort to manage public information about the incident was also apparent on Saturday in Shanwei, where villagers said some of the wounded and dead were taken by the police.

At one hospital, visited by a foreign journalist after 11 p.m., people said injured residents from Dongzhou were being cared for in isolation on a third floor ward. On the third floor, a wing of the hospital was fenced off and guarded by the police.


On Saturday night, roads out of Shanwei for a distance of more than 160 kilometers had police checkpoints that taxi drivers said had been created to search for "fugitives" from Dongzhou.

On Sunday, villagers contacted by telephone claimed that people who visited their hospitalized relatives in Shanwei had been detained.

The deadly confrontation Tuesday was the culmination of months of tension over the construction of a coal-fired power plant at Dongzhou. Villagers said they had not been adequately compensated for the use of their land ? less than $3 per family, according to one account - and feared pollution from the plant would destroy their livelihood as fishermen. The construction plans called for a bay beside the village to be reclaimed with landfill.

"Shanwei's deputy party secretary said that he

wanted to trample Dongzhou into a flat land," said a village resident who gave her name as Jiang.

On Saturday, even as they continued their search of the village and questioning of residents, the authorities said they had no choice but to open fire.

"I'm a good friend of Dongzhou people," one party official said by megaphone as he toured the village. "Nobody wants to see anything like what happened here on the night of Dec. 6, but the people of this village are too barbaric. We were forced to open fire."

From the start, villagers have disputed accounts that said they had attacked the authorities first with explosives.

"We didn't use explosives, because we were too far away," said one villager, a 16-year-old boy who was in the midst of the crowd when the violence erupted. "Someone may have tried, but there's no way we could have reached them. These were homemade weapons, and when they started shooting, we didn't have a chance."

SHENZHEN, China Five days after a fatal assault by security forces put down a demonstration in a village near Hong Kong, the Chinese authorities began Sunday to consolidate an official version of the events, blaming villagers for the violence, but also punishing at least one local commander.

The delayed response by the Chinese government appeared, at least in part, to be part of a carefully measured public relations effort intended to defuse public outrage over the deaths of 20 or more residents of the hamlet, according to villagers' accounts, as well as upholding Beijing's own vision of public order and the "rule of law."

In the first widely circulated account the incident, which occurred in the village of Dongzhou, in southern Guangdong Province, the Xinhua press agency Web site cited the information office of the nearby city of Shanwei, saying that a "chaotic mob" had begun throwing explosives at the police Tuesday night, forcing the police to "open fire in alarm." The report said that three villagers were killed and eight others were injured.

The Chinese news reports said that 170 villagers, led by a few instigators, attacked a local wind power plant as part of their protest against another planned development there, a coal-fired power plant, using knives, blasting caps and Molotov cocktails.

On Sunday, as detailed accounts of the incident given by villagers were being reported in the foreign news media and commented upon in Chinese-language Web sites, the authorities announced the arrest of a local commander who was in charge during the incident. Without naming him, they said he had mishandled the situation under "extremely urgent circumstances."

The Xinhua report did not make clear whether there had been one or more arrests of officers in charge. Villagers interviewed Sunday said they had been told of two arrests.

The official account of the incident, as well as the death toll being reported in the mainland Chinese media, remain at odds with largely concordant accounts of the villagers, dozens of whom have been interviewed since Friday.

According to these accounts, three bodies were taken to a local clinic after the showdown between the protesters and security forces, and another to a hospital in Shanwei, a city about 25 kilometers, or 15 miles, to the north of Dongzhou, which has jurisdiction over the village.

In telephone interviews with villagers on Saturday and Sunday, witnesses spoke repeatedly of an additional seven or eight bodies seen by a roadside near the scene of the violence. Others accounts, given by numerous villagers, spoke of 13 or so bodies floating in the sea after the security forces used automatic weapons on the protesters. The villagers said they had set off fireworks and exploded blasting caps from a distance of more than 90 paces from the massed police and paramilitary forces. Villagers also repeatedly spoke of injured people being approached by security forces and fatally shot at close range.

"There were seven or eight bodies, killed by the spray of gunfire, that fell into a ditch," said one villager, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The next day, going up along the ditch deep into the grass bushes, villagers found up to 10 bodies. Those inside the ditch were taken away and cremated immediately. I saw it while hiding in the grass bush on the mountain. Immediately I felt like crying, it was such a cruel scene."

The villager's account dovetails with that of several other villagers who spoke of bodies by the roadside near a village crossroads. Others spoke of the effort by soldiers to dispose of corpses, keeping villagers at a distance while they burned some of them, and loading others into a minibus, which some villagers said, then took the bodies to a local crematorium for disposal.

Dongzhou residents also said that at least 40 villagers are still unaccounted for, and it is not known whether the missing were killed, arrested or remain in hiding.

If accurate, these accounts suggest a frenzied effort by authorities to maintain an official death toll of about three people, thereby minimizing the importance of the event, which constitutes the greatest known use of force by the Chinese security forces against ordinary citizens since the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing, in 1989.

Villagers said that with security agents still circulating in large numbers, and going from door to door to interrogate residents, some families that had recovered the corpses of their relatives had buried them hastily, and in secret, to avoid their confiscation.

Others said that the police had offered money to those who would surrender their corpses, as well as money for casing from ammunition recovered from the scene. Villagers said that some people had sold their casings, while others had kept them as evidence of the use of force.

The effort to manage public information about the incident was also apparent on Saturday in Shanwei, where villagers said some of the wounded and dead were taken by the police.

At one hospital, visited by a foreign journalist after 11 p.m., people said injured residents from Dongzhou were being cared for in isolation on a third floor ward. On the third floor, a wing of the hospital was fenced off and guarded by the police.


On Saturday night, roads out of Shanwei for a distance of more than 160 kilometers had police checkpoints that taxi drivers said had been created to search for "fugitives" from Dongzhou.

On Sunday, villagers contacted by telephone claimed that people who visited their hospitalized relatives in Shanwei had been detained.

The deadly confrontation Tuesday was the culmination of months of tension over the construction of a coal-fired power plant at Dongzhou. Villagers said they had not been adequately compensated for the use of their land ? less than $3 per family, according to one account - and feared pollution from the plant would destroy their livelihood as fishermen. The construction plans called for a bay beside the village to be reclaimed with landfill.

"Shanwei's deputy party secretary said that he

wanted to trample Dongzhou into a flat land," said a village resident who gave her name as Jiang.

On Saturday, even as they continued their search of the village and questioning of residents, the authorities said they had no choice but to open fire.

"I'm a good friend of Dongzhou people," one party official said by megaphone as he toured the village. "Nobody wants to see anything like what happened here on the night of Dec. 6, but the people of this village are too barbaric. We were forced to open fire."

From the start, villagers have disputed accounts that said they had attacked the authorities first with explosives.

"We didn't use explosives, because we were too far away," said one villager, a 16-year-old boy who was in the midst of the crowd when the violence erupted. "Someone may have tried, but there's no way we could have reached them. These were homemade weapons, and when they started shooting, we didn't have a chance."

SHENZHEN, China Five days after a fatal assault by security forces put down a demonstration in a village near Hong Kong, the Chinese authorities began Sunday to consolidate an official version of the events, blaming villagers for the violence, but also punishing at least one local commander.

The delayed response by the Chinese government appeared, at least in part, to be part of a carefully measured public relations effort intended to defuse public outrage over the deaths of 20 or more residents of the hamlet, according to villagers' accounts, as well as upholding Beijing's own vision of public order and the "rule of law."

In the first widely circulated account the incident, which occurred in the village of Dongzhou, in southern Guangdong Province, the Xinhua press agency Web site cited the information office of the nearby city of Shanwei, saying that a "chaotic mob" had begun throwing explosives at the police Tuesday night, forcing the police to "open fire in alarm." The report said that three villagers were killed and eight others were injured.

The Chinese news reports said that 170 villagers, led by a few instigators, attacked a local wind power plant as part of their protest against another planned development there, a coal-fired power plant, using knives, blasting caps and Molotov cocktails.

On Sunday, as detailed accounts of the incident given by villagers were being reported in the foreign news media and commented upon in Chinese-language Web sites, the authorities announced the arrest of a local commander who was in charge during the incident. Without naming him, they said he had mishandled the situation under "extremely urgent circumstances."

The Xinhua report did not make clear whether there had been one or more arrests of officers in charge. Villagers interviewed Sunday said they had been told of two arrests.

The official account of the incident, as well as the death toll being reported in the mainland Chinese media, remain at odds with largely concordant

The Future of China

The future of China: chinese economic growth, statistics, graphs and tables, demography, social trends, outsourcing, exports and other useful data - presentation slides

Technology: life after convergence - what happens next?

Life after Convergence ? innovation, variety and divergence

Everyone is talking about convergence, yet few corporations fully understand the real threats and opportunities. Telecom companies become software and media houses. Food retailers become online banks. Computers become phones and video stores, while phones become TVs, and cameras become e-mail devices. However, while we will see many strange partnerships, with convergence in products and services on price, features and quality, we will also see huge new investment in diversity. The nanopod is just one example of divergent, highly specialised, low cost devices, designed to do just one simple thing really well. In comparison, convergence can be boring, destroys variety, breeds monopoly, kills invention, adds unwanted options, makes life more complicated - and robs consumers of choice.

Convergence is about co-packaging, but all real innovation is about diversity: doing things different to serve clients better. Many companies are trying hard to sell single multi-tasking, convergent (expensive) devices to solve all problems. Take the so-called digital home: convergence might mean total control with wireless TV / video / music / web in every room, all from one online PC, also used for children?s games and homework - or a fridge that is also a web browser. But who really wants web access on a fridge door, or a single remote control for every device in the house, or a single device to play the same music in every room?

Divergence means I have a nanopod for personal music, plus a tiny mobile phone (useless for serious camera use), a pocket PDA with colour screen and video, an ultra-small portable PC with 5.5 hours battery life suitable for long flights, and a giant-screened laptop for high-powered applications, suitable for car journeys where screen size prevents nausea and eye strain. I also have a data projector for a 3 metre wide home cinema with a dedicated DVD / digital TV system, and so on.

We need to keep focussed on the needs of ordinary people who want many simple, well-designed, reliable, low cost products ? to do different things. We need to encourage diversity, innovation and creative genius, to improve quality of life, solve real problems and make great things happen. Convergence is important but divergence will drive the future, and survival of every technology company will depend on it.