Democratization of Knowledge

I was just wondering how the world has evolved the way we learn today, or the way we should be learning today, in comparison to the way we learned in the past, say, since as early as a decade back. A decade back, only privileged ones had access to “esoteric” knowledge or information, and that’s too at the cost of hundreds of grand in college fees.

In today’s world, just any Tom, Dick, or for that matter even Harry can KNOW about anything, using the Internet, thus, leading to the democratization of knowledge. So, now, it’s imperative for all of us to NOT just know of things, but to really UNDERSTAND things, because if we don’t do so, we will land up being just fools, since the information is now freely available at the click of a mouse.

Moreover, the so-called great professors at big campuses need to impart real education in terms of real values. They just cannot afford to give very mundane definitions of big jargons, and be considered “big guns.” This is more prevalent in India -- because I know it by experience.

So, the gist of this is that any fool can know; the point is to understand.

Competing With Everyone From Everywhere For Everything

Globalization is about competing with everyone from everywhere for everything. And by that it means that your competition will change and you will be competing "with everyone" -- not just your traditional competitors – including, new companies from countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and just about everywhere.

The second point is that competition will come "from everywhere." Your competitors will no longer look a lot like you. It may be a small company in Indonesia. It may be a large company in China. It may be a big-sized company in India. So, competition will be coming from everywhere and competing for everything.

The third point is that competition will be "for everything," it means competing for resources, for people, for customers, for distribution systems, and for supply chains.

It is expected to spring up a wealth of competition because companies from low-cost countries are moving from being outsourcing vehicles for the traditional Western multi-nationals, to becoming companies in their own right that are growing and growing rapidly. So you see companies like Tata Steel and Mahindra that are starting to take roles on the global stage, with their own brands and their own products. They should not be ignored.

Globalization is not just affecting the Western companies, the traditional multi-nationals, but also providing impetus to the new emerging companies that are starting to become large and that are challenging those multi-nationals, and there are big lessons to be learnt both for emerging companies and, more importantly, for the multi-nationals.