Week 4

The theme for this week’s session was ‘change’.

Changes are constantly taking place in the world, which makes it important to adapt in order to survive. The ones who are the most adaptable are the ones who end up being the most successful.

Change can occur in many ways: through climate change, new technology, shifts in economic power, resources, and so on.

Changes brought about by ‘shifts in economic power’ reminded me of discussions that we had in week 2, about China, India, and some countries in Africa becoming the richest in the world around the year 2050. This was quite surprising to me, and I mentioned it in my blog 2 weeks ago, but I really had no explanation as to how or why this would happen.

The readings this week again mentioned this shift in economic power from the West to the East, and somewhat explained how it would unfold.

In the next 20 years, most of the global population growth will take place in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and less than 3% will occur in the West. The large population in these countries will enable their economic influence to grow as GDP per person rises; and economic power will eventually lead to dominance in other areas as well. On the other hand, developed countries will find it hard to maintain strong growth rates because of an aging-population problem, where the size of their working populations will decrease.

By 2025, China will most likely be the new economic superpower, followed by India. No other countries are projected to rise to their level, or match the impacts that they will have globally.

The second half of the lesson focused on ‘Change Management and Change Leadership’. When it comes to organizational change, it becomes very important for leaders and managers to take risks and make changes, or else nothing will ever get done. There are some people who don’t change, unless there is an absolute need to do so, which results in a “burning-platform” problem.

This is exactly what Nokia went through, and resulted in it being left behind in the market for smart phones.

Nokia was once the leading producer of mobile phones in the world. They mainly specialized in hardware and customization of their handsets. Eventually, companies like Samsung and Apple started making smart phones, and they focused on software, and applications. People wanted applications, not customized handsets, so Nokia’s sales started dropping. Eventually they started making smart phones as well, but the problem was that, since their handsets were so different from each other, developers had to come up with different versions of applications to support all their devices, making it expensive and inconvenient. Nokia was also late in upgrading their Symbian operating system, and eventually partnered with Microsoft. So Nokia just kept running into problems at every corner, all because they were too late in adapting to changes in the market.

Both the examples, of China and India becoming global superpowers, and the fall of Nokia, reiterate the main points of the lecture:

-Change is constantly taking place

-It is important to take risks

-The ones who adapt are the ones who succeed

I rate the session an 8 out of 10.