Girls Take Center Stage At The World Economic Forum

This week I’ll be heading off to Davos, Switzerland with my colleagues from Nike, Inc. for the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting. It’s no surprise that the entire meeting will be focused on the global economic crisis. All the big names from business, government and the media will spend the week asking questions on everyone’s mind: Where did we go wrong? What tough calls need to be made? How do we get out of this mess?

The answer to these questions lies in someone unexpected. There is an amazingly powerful force we can unleash to solve the world’s problems if we do the simplest thing: invest in a girl in poverty. With all this talk of the economy, it may seem odd to focus on adolescent girls, but we already spend a ridiculous amount of money and time trying to solve the world’s ills in the same old way. This financial crisis intensifies the need to invest existing resources more effectively, and a new and effective approach is right under your nose. It’s called the girl effect. read more

Does Globalization Threaten or Nurture Local Markets

In “The World is Flat,” New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman argues that computer technology has created a world in which, to a greater extent than ever before, individuals can compete and collaborate globally. Linked by a fiber-optic network, he says, we have all become next-door neighbors (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).

Much has been made of this so-called flattening of the world. Friedman describes the penetration of global culture into some of the most unlikely places on earth. But as the planet continues to shrink—and as the wildest dreams of Kathmandu turn into the facts of Kew, will individual cultures vanish in the process? read more

Karl Fisch – Did You Know on Globalization and Technology

5 Trends That Will Change Society

Author Richard Watson examines emerging patterns and developments and society, politics, science and technology, media and entertainment, and other industries in his book Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years — and makes educated, and witty speculations as to where they might take us.

He listed the top 5 trends that will change society over the next 50 years: GLOBALIZATION, LOCALIZATION, POLARIZATION, ANXIETY, MEANING.

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