Chapter 17 Chapter 6 How to avoid the impact of planarization (1)

——Looking for the Emerging Middle Class The trend of flattening the world may be as difficult to stop as the past marketization process (but not impossible), which is good for American society as a whole, but how can individuals benefit from a flat world?How do we explain it to children? The answer is simple: there are many good jobs out there in the flat world, and if you have a sufficient level of knowledge, skills, creativity, and self-motivation, you will be able to take advantage of them.However, the new challenges we face are serious. A young American would be wise if he or she could realize that he or she would end up competing with every Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian.In Globalization 1.0, countries must think globally about how they will prosper, or at least survive.Whereas in Globalization 2.0, companies had to change their thinking, Version 3.0 is a personal challenge, requiring not only certain skills, but also psychological resilience, self-motivation and resilience.I can say with certainty that we Americans can be the best in this round of development.But I can also say with equal certainty that it will not be easy, and that the future will require as much hard work as we have traveled in the past 50 years.

Each of us must work harder and move faster to ensure that our living standards continue to rise. "Globalization has expanded from the industry domain to the personal domain," said Vivok, president of Wipro Technologies. Paul says, "People today feel how the international division of labor works in all kinds of jobs: "I'm working with someone in India.I'm buying something from a Chinese.I sold it to an Englishman. 'I think what's happening is the fact that, on an individual level, there's this kind of integration on an international scale that hasn't been done before.As a result, we found, surprisingly, that for each individual: "Not only must my job be found in a global supply chain, but I myself must understand the competition and possess the skills that are appropriate for the job in the production chain. I This work should be done to as high a quality as or better than anyone else in the world is doing.'” Today, more than ever, this sense of responsibility to not have to be prodded.In many global companies, you have to prove that you are qualified to stay in this position through the value you create and unique skills every day, or you will be eliminated.

In conclusion, being mediocre at work is never a good thing, but while the world market has yet to break down barriers, mediocre talent can still make a decent paycheck and you can hang around like that forever.In a flat world, however, you can no longer be mediocre or unenthusiastic about your work.In a flat world, you don't want to hear what Willie says to his son Biff who doesn't obey his will in "Death of a Salesman."Willie believes that even if he is a salesman, even if his job is not satisfactory-the fierce market competition makes him hit the wall everywhere, but he still has a beautiful dream, dreaming that he will excel one day, but his son Biff But he didn't appreciate it, thinking that his dad was a loser who couldn't keep up with the trend: "The latest product! A dozen for a dime! You're a dozen for a dime!" Angry Willie retorted: "I'm not a A dime a dozen! I'm Willy Loman and you're Biff Loman!"

I don't like having that conversation with my girls, so in this flat world, my advice to them is succinct and blunt: "When I was a kid, my parents were like countless American parents of their generation. , often said to me: "Tom, clean up your bowl and don't forget that the Chinese (or Indians) are starving. ' What I say to you is: "Son, do your homework and don't forget that Chinese or Indians are staring at your jobs." In the flat world, there are no so-called American jobs, Anyone, as long as they have the ability, can participate in the competition.Unlike in the past, no matter where in the world this person is, as long as he is the best, the brightest, the most productive or the lowest cost, this job is for him.

New ingredients that make up the middle part of the bell curve In a flat world, it's not enough to do your homework, you have to pick the right ones.Because, far from being just fine-tuned, companies competing in a flat world are changing entire models and methods of work.This means that students must also adapt what they learn, and educators must adapt what they teach.They can't always cling to the old content and methods of the past 50 years.That's what I'm going to talk about in this chapter and the next: What middle-class jobs are created by successful companies and entrepreneurs?How workers can prepare for these jobs, and how educators can help them acquire the skills.

Let's start from the beginning.For individuals, the key to surviving in a flat world is to find ways to make themselves "outsiders from the impact of flattening."Yes, when the world becomes flat, the social hierarchy is reversed. In India, the people at the bottom of the society are "outsiders" in social development, but in a flat world, everyone should strive to be an "outsider".In my dictionary, “outsiders from flattening” are those whose jobs will not be moved to developing countries, whose jobs will not be digitized or automated.Remember analyst David.In Roskoff's words, most jobs are not being eliminated to India or China, but "eliminated to the past"-that is, digitization and automation replace traditional manual operations.Instead of moving to India, traditional call reception jobs are being microchipped out.The flatter the world, the more jobs will be digitized, automated, or moved to laggards.Nandan.Neil Carney likes to divide jobs in the flat world into "fungible and non-fungible".

By substitutable, we mean jobs that can easily be digitized, automated or moved abroad.One of the most distinctive features of the flat world is that more and more jobs, not just blue-collar jobs in manufacturing but also in services, are gradually becoming fungible.As more people work in the service industry than before, more people will be affected. We live in a world where more and more things become tradable.Alan.Brand, the eminent Princeton economist, explains in a wise essay titled "Offshore Concerns": At any given time, the level of technology—especially transportation and It largely determines which goods and services are easy to trade and which are not.In short, economists have traditionally divided the world's goods and services into two broad categories: .tradables and non-tradables. (That is what Nandan Nilekani said. Substitutable and irreplaceable.).Traditionally, anything that can be put into a crate and shipped (roughly considered a manufactured item) can be classified as tradable, and accordingly, anything that cannot be packed (like services) or is too heavy Things that are not easy to transport (like cement) are non-tradable goods.

But now, this classification method is outdated. Due to the continuous advancement of science and technology, transportation has become easier and cheaper, and the boundaries between tradable and non-tradable goods have become more and more blurred... With the development of the times, more and more things can be trade.It’s worth mentioning that packing boxes aren’t what they used to be.If you put an item in a crate, that item is a tradable item - this idea is so old... a lot of digital information has replaced the role of the crate in the past, many services are already tradable items, and A wider variety of services will also become tradable.

Let me make a bold prediction: in the future, and even to a large extent in the present age, the key to whether an item can be traded internationally will no longer be whether it can be packaged but whether a service can be sold Electronic means for long-distance transmission, and will not cause quality loss during the transmission process.The multitude of tradable services is what people call the new and the new.There is no doubt that these new and novel things will emerge in large numbers. (Princeton University Center for Economic Policy Research Working Paper No. 119, December 2005.) If this is the way the world economy is going, who will be the outsider from the flattening in the process?Which jobs have the potential to become fungible, susceptible to automation, digitization or obsolescence?I divide the outsiders who are immune to flattening into three simple categories.The first category is people with special gifts or people with some special skills, such as Michael.Jordan, Madonna, Elton.John, JK Rowling, your brain surgeon and leading cancer researcher at the National Institutes of Health.These individuals provide products that are unique and irreplaceable, and therefore cannot be transferred abroad, automated or transmitted electronically.

These people are immune to the brunt of flattening.Since the products or services provided by these people are in high demand across the globe, these demands can drive their salaries to considerable heights. The second category is people whose work is closely related to a certain region.They are protected from flattening because they are localized to work and therefore familiar with the local conditions, or they are familiar with the customers, clients, patients or audiences with whom they deal face-to-face.Usually these jobs cannot be digitized and are difficult to be replaced by others.Like my hairdresser, the waitress at the restaurant where I eat lunch, the chef, the plumber, the nurse, the dentist, the local singer, the masseur, the retailer, the repairman, the electrician, the nurse, the gardener, the housemaid, and the divorce attorney.These people include both high-status workers (divorce lawyers, dentists), some craftsmen (plumbers, carpenters), and low-status jobs (trash collectors and maids).Regardless of the specific skills of these workers, generally speaking, their wage levels are determined by the supply and demand of the local market.

Then, there is the third category of people.Many are employed in middle-class jobs—from factory assembly lines, to data entry, securities analysis, accounting, and radiology—jobs that were once considered irreplaceable or untradeable, and now, as the world flattens, , they have transformed into fungible and tradable.I call these jobs "old middle class" jobs.Many people in this kind of work now face pressure from the flat world.Just like Nandan.Neil Carney said: "The problem facing America is really the problem of the middle class. Because gone are the days when you could count on being an accountant to live a secure life.A lot of the middle class is this old middle class...they won't reinvest in their intellectual skills unless they are forced to, and as a result many are hanging from the same tree. "We don't want to see that happen. The U.S. economy used to look like a bell curve with a huge bulge in the middle. This bulge represented middle-class jobs. It's not just the U.S. economy. The foundation of stability, and it is the foundation of political stability. Without a large middle class, our democratic system would not be so strong. If this bell curve becomes a dumbbell curve with two big ends and a small middle, the United States will not be able to bear it. A dumbbell curve is hard to guarantee economic fairness and political stability. Gene Sperling, former Clinton national economic adviser, rightly puts it this way: “We either grow together or we fall apart. " So, if more and more of the old middle-class jobs are automated or relocated to developing countries in the future, the big question for the U.S. and other developed countries is: What are the new middle-class jobs and what are they? What skills do people need?In the United States, new middle-class jobs are being created all the time, which is why we don't have mass unemployment as the world flattens. But to work in these burgeoning middle-class jobs, you'll need some sort of flat-world technology that insulates you—at least temporarily—from flattening.Among the new ingredients that make up the middle part of the bell curve, there is no iron rice bowl that guarantees crops in both drought and flood. What exactly are the skills of the emerging middle class?To answer this question, I went to some American companies that have been successful in the flat world, and asked a simple question: "Obviously, you have a lot of emerging middle-class jobs here. Ask who can work here, and what are they doing?" What job?" I was then given a list of emerging middle-class jobs and the skills needed to do them. These messages are like "SOS" ads in a flat world. Great Collaborators Clearly, many of the emerging middle class jobs require collaboration with others or between departments within companies and between companies, especially those that employ people from different countries around the world.So as more and more companies expand their business globally and join the global supply chain, the most critical job of the emerging middle class is a kind of manager who can coordinate the various components of the supply chain to realize the seven continents. , 7 days a week, 24 hours a day uninterrupted production. I first understood this in the summer of 2005, with my daughter Orly Come to Bangalore.There she volunteers and works as a teacher at a school in the suburbs.One day, she and I went to visit my friends in Infosys.When we arrived at the Infosys headquarters, the spokeswoman gave us a tour of the building.As we walked down the hall, she added in passing: "Our interns heard you were coming here today, and they asked if you could speak to them." No problem, I said, I do.I always enjoy interacting with these young Indians. "No, no," she corrected, "not an Indian, but an intern from the United States." "Are there any American interns in your company?" That's right, she said.That summer 9,000 applicants competed for 100 internships at Infosys.These applicants are mainly from North America, China, France and Germany.Intern Vicki Chen is from Clement College in California, USA, with Chinese descent, studying business.I asked her why she came to Bangalore for an internship. "All the business moved to India, so I followed," she said, "If this is the temple that people look up to, you should be taught here so that when you walk out of the temple, you are in the eyes of others. become more valuable.” Like Nandan, CEO of the company.Nelekani pointed out to me that Infosys, located in Bangalore, is one of the largest outsourcing companies in the world. Research, solicit new business, develop new software, and maintain existing accounts. "There are a lot of good jobs that involve this kind of global collaboration," Nelekani said. "If you work for a big pharmaceutical company, and the company starts doing a lot of research in India. Dealing with the Food and Drug Administration and responding to various issues in the local market. In global production, there are always local issues involved. "These new types of cooperation exist in sales, marketing, maintenance and management, but what they have in common is that workers must have good horizontal cooperation capabilities at all times and be able to work in a global company (whose headquarters may be in Beijing or Bangalore, not Boston) A pleasure to work in and be able to adapt my services to the local market.This is the ability to coordinate, mobilize, motivate and manage a multidimensional, multicultural workforce. At the same time, since many products will be jointly manufactured through global production chains, the content of the work of many emerging middle classes includes how to make the production chain run more efficiently.Born in Venezuela, Carlota is an expert on technology and socio-economic development."The more complex the global network becomes, the more companies want to collaborate and manage it on technical specifications, compatibility, research and design, global markets, distribution channels, data sharing, and security," Perez said. In this chain, there are many jobs for the emerging middle class. Compound Talents The more we expand the boundaries of knowledge and strengthen innovation, the more new breakthroughs will result. The new generation of hot-selling products and services come from combining completely different things, and this combination, you dreamed of before Can't even imagine. For example, SEO jobs combine mathematicians and marketing experts.The next major breakthroughs in the biological sciences will come from computer engineers.They can work with pharmaceutical companies to map the human genome, and pharmaceutical companies can develop life-saving drugs based on genomic information.This combination will generate new jobs.As I write this chapter, one of the trendiest industries is so-called "mash-ups," which consist of combining two different networking tools.For example, some local realtors combine craigslist.org with Google.com.In this way, all the information of people selling and renting houses in a specific area can be found through Google Maps, and all information can be updated every second. "Can you cultivate compound talents who combine artists and analysts?" S. Chris, Chief Operating Officer of Infosys.Gopalakrishnan asked me one day in Bangalore. "If integrated work can create new value, then you need compound talents. The traditional way to solve the problem is to break it down into various parts and solve them one by one, but now, the way to solve the problem is to integrate the scattered things. Let's start with the whole thing. IBM used to make chips, computers, and software at the same time. But if you look at Dell, it never designed and built its own computers. It is only responsible for purchasing all kinds of parts, and delivering the finished products to customers after assembly.Dell's value lies in its comprehensive capabilities, and it does this better than anyone else.The key is to assemble according to the customer's requirements... …So, in an organization, you need not only professional talents in various fields, but also compound talents who can integrate various abilities.The fact that what is happening now in India and in Infosys is that we are strengthening our ability to provide comprehensive products to our customers.We are able to detect the trends in the industry today and anticipate the development trend of the trend. "Jeff Wacker is responsible for future industry development trends at Electronic Consulting Systems (EDS). He once predicted in the company memo what jobs will be the most popular in the next 15 to 20 years. The conclusion is CIO." Although the acronym is also CIO ,” he wrote, “but the CIO of the future will be the chief integration officer, not the chief information officer of today.Information technology has been rooted in all fields of business, and high-tech companies have changed from simply providing technology to integrating various production activities. "The more multi-talented narrators, the more we need administrators, writers, teachers, filmmakers, journalists, and editors who are good narrators who can put complex things into simple terms. Marcia.Lockley is also a corporate architect working at EDS.She is a typical neo-middle class person who has learned how to be a narrator.Explaining something to others is more important than focusing on your own work, she told me during my visit to EDS headquarters: "I have a lot of people here who can write software," she said. "But some people have to go up to the customer and explain, "This software is designed for users like you, and it will help you a lot by installing it on your system, and it's only for sale now," she said. …Dollar. '" Think about it, if you can explain complex issues to others in simple language so that they can understand, then you have a greater chance of getting orders from customers.Because you know what to tell your client, and the more information you let your client know, the better a storyteller you will be.The value of Amazon.com isn't just that it sells you books for 30% off the list price, it's that it helps you quickly and easily browse the sea of ​​books and find the ones you're interested in. howard.Freeman, 53, owns a photography studio in Aspen, Colorado, that takes custom photos, called Slideshow Master Photography.We met by chance.He is my ski guide. After lunch one day on a snowy mountaintop, he told me how his business had grown, and I told him later that he had become the narrator of the emerging middle class.Here's the thing: When Freeman's business first started in 1977, he specialized in processing, duplicating, and enlarging slides taken by professional photographers or advanced amateurs.Such as those images that will be published in Architectural Digest.But due to the spread and convergence of technology and the rise of digital photography, fewer and fewer people are shooting slides and other film photography. The original business dwindled, and Freeman found himself spending more and more time each day explaining to customers how to use a digital camera and how to use a computer to process and retouch digital photos.After a period of time like this, he found himself exhausted every time he left work at 5 pm, but there was not much real business done.He spends all his time explaining the benefits and usage of digital cameras to clients or employees. Suddenly one day, he realized that, in this case, he might as well make it his job to explain doubts. In early 2006, he got rid of the bulky printing equipment at his shop for enlarging slides and bought 12 computers (mostly Macs) and some digital photo printers.He and his staff not only used these computers to process digital photos of clients, but created a whole new career as storytellers.They invite potential customers to come in over coffee or otherwise to learn how to use the latest computer software to do the complex work of editing, retouching and manipulating digital photos.They also go out of the company, take the initiative to give lectures, and go to the homes of office workers or companies that use computers for work, so that they can learn and use immediately. "We used to sell film, develop and print photographs and give consulting for free," Freeman said. The business becomes the business of explaining itself." With that in mind, Freeman told me he had to think about his employees in a different way. Pure background technical workers who are not good at dealing with people are no longer popular, and talents with strong communication skills have become more valuable. They may become potential customer discoverers by letting customers understand digital technology. Leverage The first person to outsource information technology was Ross.Perot, who ran for the presidency of the United States in 1992. After retiring from the Navy in 1957, he worked as a salesman for IBM.There, he used the company's computers (computers were not popular at that time and were very expensive) to provide data processing services for other companies during his off-duty time.Perot left IBM in 1962 and established EDS, which specialized in data processing and won orders from many large companies and even the US government.These jobs now appear to be the so-called outsourcing of commercial production processes, but because of the flattening of the world, the outsourcing location has been shifted from Texas to Bangalore.EDS, founded by Perot in 1984, still outsources work to compete with Indian companies around the world. In November 2005, I visited EDS' campus in Plano, Texas.On the lawn in the center of the park, a modern building made of glass and steel stands up. This is the System Management Center (SMC). There is a dedicated viewing area for visitors, where chairs are placed, like a home theater.When you come in, the curtains close, the crew exits, and a huge control room opens up in front of you, as if NASA were monitoring the launch to the moon.In the control room are seven huge wall screens, below which are small TV monitors, and below that are 100 or so personal computers.Today, only about 20 people use computers because in a few days, 20 people can do what 100 people did 10 years ago. The only way for EDS to compete with India, which has the advantage of cheap labor, is to increase the productivity of individual employees.Now these 20 people can use various advanced technologies to work efficiently in a timely manner. Having said that, I have a question: Who are the next 20 people?Why haven't they been hit by automation and outsourcing?Here's how I see it: when the sysadmin center is built, those 100 people take turns working here, with their eyes on the screen all the time, because you can't guarantee your computer or other computers while you're working on other people's data It is in normal operation at any time. If there is a temporary problem with the computer, the company's business will be greatly affected.Therefore, the workers in the system management center have to monitor various display screens at the same time to check the data processing status of each customer.You might find 1,000 useful pieces of information and one wrong piece of information - if you miss one, you'll be stuck. At the time, some of the people working in the system administration center hadn't gone to college, let alone used computers. EDS simply trains them to stare at the screen non-stop and warn them if they see something wrong. So, if you suddenly get a "This service is not available" message, and a call from customer center, your job as the operator is to scour four different displays for useful information and pinpoint what's causing the problem. reason. Is the reason for the router?Or the server?Two different operators will look it up in different ways and come up with different answers. With the development of the times, EDS can query the cause of the problem through more and more automated equipment. "Now, we don't have to monitor the screens manually," said the guide who showed me around EDS. "If there is a problem, the screen will automatically display a message such as 'router is down." Maybe you will say to yourself, Now you can fill those 20 jobs without any further education.But the opposite is true.Only tech-savvy professionals can find employment at EDS.They can precisely design computer programs to make other people's work easier and faster.These people are immune to the brunt of flattening.The emerging middle-class jobs at EDS are now at least filled by people who can operate these new programs.what does this mean? Today, the people sitting in front of 20 computers are all computer engineers who are proficient in relevant technologies. EDS future development analyst Jeff."We're now looking for employees who can not only find the problem, but also quickly find a solution to the problem once and for all so that it doesn't happen again," Wacker said. . Chips and seedlings...they identify problems, fix them, redesign the system, and treat both the symptoms and the root causes.” The redesign of the system has to meet the standard specifications, so that when you solve this problem, the new system can be applied to the EDS system, realize system optimization, and if it is better, sell these technologies to customers. "Now we need people who know how to bring all these different things together -- but not just from our computers to our customers' computers," Wacker said. "It's about bringing our business together. Integrate with our client’s business and our client’s client’s business. Our client’s client may be a supplier of Dell computers, so your employees must understand Dell and how it works.” For example, EDS works for a Canadian lumber company .To be more efficient, lumber companies need to use technology systems to determine before a tree is felled whether it will be used for pulp or lumber, which mill will process it, which retailer will buy it, and even the exact size of each piece of wood. Dimensions and what buildings, furniture or offices the wood will be used for.If EDS can help Canadian Lumber Company to complete the above work and realize the effective coordination between the design data of architectural designers and the quantity provided by raw material contractors and the felling quantity of Timber Company, it will save money, reduce waste, reduce transportation costs and increase profits for any party . All of this is about how to combine computers and people to achieve complementary advantages.Then, the new and best practical experience accumulated by human beings is continuously infused into the computer system to realize system upgrades and make the combination of machines and humans more productive.In this cycle, there are many emerging middle-class jobs. Adapter Gartner Group is a technology consulting company. They created a new term to describe the development trend of the information technology world, that is, from the current experts to all-round talents who are proficient in everything, that is, "generalist".