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    World Business: An e-Book Special Report
    World Business: An e-Book Special Report
    World Business: An e-Book Special Report
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    World Business: An e-Book Special Report

    By The Staff of the Wall Street Journal

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    About this ebook

    Several times a year, The Wall Street Journal publishes Special Reports on the subject of World Business. This ongoing feature is one of the most popular in both the print and interactive versions of the Journal.
    Here, in World Business, is the very best of the best Special Reports: Stories of. countries trying to lure foreign businesses, of businesses trying to lure foreign workers, of workers seeking opportunities in foreign countries. Here is the story of the race to find -- or develop -- the world's next Silicon Valley: Will it be Dublin, Ireland; Beijing, China; Hyderabad, India; Campinas, Brazil; or Paris, France? Here, also, are the stories of the Viet Kieu (Vietnamese living abroad) who are drawn back to their homeland to do business, of the ByteKeepers at Manila's AMA Computer College who run a multinational business from a homemade PC, of the Japanese backers of Bluetooth (including Toshiba, Sony, Mitsubishi, and other large computer and consumer electronics companies) who hope to regain the glory of being the world's high-tech leaders with their new wireless initiative,...of corporations, individuals, and nations struggling to succeed in today's global economy.
    Collected and presented here for the first time in ebook format, World Business is a searchable, portable, and hugely valuable resource for anyone involved in international business -- or, indeed, any business person -- from the award-winning staff of The Wall Street Journal.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFree Press
    Release dateJan 17, 2001
    ISBN9780743215190
    World Business: An e-Book Special Report
    Author

    The Staff of the Wall Street Journal

    The Staff of the Wall Street Journal annually publishes guides, books, and journals that serve as invaluable resources for prospective students, school faculty, and administrators.

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      Book preview

      World Business - The Staff of the Wall Street Journal

      ONE

      Innovation and Technology

      September 25, 2000

      GLOBAL IMPACT

      The U.S. leads in computers in use (in millions), but other regions may soon surpass it

      A PC ON EVERY DESK?

      Leading nations in computers in use per 1,000 people

      Source: Computer Industry Almanac

      The Telecom Connection

      GOING DIGITAL

      Percentage of phone lines connected to digital exchanges in selected countries

      *1993 and 1997 figures

      **1998 figure

      CUTTING THE CORD

      Cellular telephone subscribers (in thousands)

      **1998 figure

      NET RESULTS

      North Americans are by far the biggest Internet users, but the rate of growth is picking up in other regions (total users for each region are in thousands)

      Sources: International Telecommunication Union; Computer Industry Almanac

      Tech and Trade

      LEADING EXPORTERS

      Nations whose high-tech exports are at least 20% of manufactured exports (1998 figures)

      Sources: World Bank; National Science Foundation

      Pride of Place

      THE NAME RACE

      A sampling of tech-related nicknames for places outside Silicon Valley, usually promoted by local boosters or cited in media accounts

      SILICON NATIONS?

      Countries to watch, based on connectivity, information security, human capital, business climate and priority given by government to tech business

      COSTA RICA

      No import taxes on computer-related equipment

      Local, domestic, long-distance and wireless access rates lowest in region

      Aggressive government policy: upgrading IT facilities in schools and improving intellectual-property laws

      Strong microchip manufacturing presence

      SOUTH KOREA

      Official promotion of e-business

      Strengthened intellectual-property protection

      Tight security standards for telecommunications and information-processing centers

      Digital signatures legal

      HUNGARY

      Heavy investment in IT education; all secondary schools connected through network computers

      Highly educated work force with strong background in sciences, engineering and economics

      Widespread popularity of Internet-based learning sponsored free of charge by businesses

      ESTONIA

      Parliament approved proposal to guarantee Internet access, as a constitutional right, for all citizens

      Government set e-readiness as national priority

      90% of public employees report to computerized workplaces

      Government offers free Internet access points to eliminate digital divide

      GHANA

      First West African nation to attain connectivity (1994)

      Ambitious plans to create model wide-area network to connect key government ministries and agencies

      Sources: Tasty Bits from the Technology Front; McConnell International LLC; World Information Technology and Services Alliance

      TWO

      People Who Need People

      BY G. PASCAL ZACHARY

      September 25, 2000

      REYKJAVIK, Iceland—Jeff Gulcher, short and quick, dribbles into a forest of tall defenders on the basketball court. He leaps for the hoop, takes an elbow to the head and falls to the floor. Lying among many big feet, he touches an olive-size gash below his right eye. It’s another bruising day for Mr. Gulcher, an American scientist from Boston who moved to this remote island nation three years ago to work for its biggest biotechnology company, DeCode Genetics Inc. Mr. Gulcher is among two dozen highly skilled non-Icelanders at DeCode, which also employs about 200 locals. For him, getting beat up on the court by inexperienced players—colleagues involved in drawing a complete genetic map of Iceland—is a small price to pay for the plum job of managing DeCode’s research team.

      And his presence is a boon for Iceland, a historically insular nation that is still among the most homogenous in the world. With only 275,000 residents, Iceland simply can’t produce all the specialists needed to sustain a company like DeCode, a pace setter in genetic analysis.

      Attracting foreign talent gives us a competitive edge, says Kari Stefansson, DeCode’s chief executive officer. A native Icelander, Mr. Stefansson supervised Mr. Gulcher’s doctoral dissertation while a professor at Harvard University and lured him to Iceland upon launching DeCode. At that time, a U.S. scientist moving to Iceland was unheard of. It is still rare. Mr. Gulcher’s wife has stayed in the U.S. He visits her every two weeks, on a plane that stops first in Minneapolis en route to Chicago, where she lives. Usually he flies through the night.

      Creative Mixing

      Despite the hassle of Mr. Gulcher’s time-consuming ritual, DeCode never considered putting him in the U.S. It’s much better to bring highly skilled people to Iceland, Mr. Stefansson says. Then out of a soup of nationalities and ethnicities, Icelanders get creativity.

      Such is the value of highly proficient workers that employers almost everywhere—even in Iceland, hours by airplane from the nearest shore—are chasing them regardless of where they live. The world over, businesses are honing their competitive edge and plugging skill shortages by importing foreigners. Some countries, too, are supporting the global trade in talented people, believing that a steady influx of the world’s best and brightest can bolster economic growth. Unless we succeed in this game, we will lose in every other game, says George Yeo, Singapore’s minister of trade and industry. Talent attraction is the foundation of everything else we do.

      Some countries still resist letting good jobs go to foreigners. Capital moves freely around the world, but labor does not. A German company doesn’t need a permit from the German government to invest a billion dollars in the U.S., but if it wishes to employ a single American in Munich, bureaucrats roll into action. Protecting industries is no longer fashionable. Protecting workers still is.

      Under pressure from employers, however, this resistance is fading. Politicians are starting to realize that industries can’t win big internationally with local talent alone. At a time when even rich countries can’t produce enough talent to meet demand, the ability to draw on people from other nations is becoming critical. Many workers with special expertise seem willing to play along. No global records are kept on the movement of the highly skilled. They are lumped together by most countries with less-skilled migrants, such as construction workers.

      But John Salt, a geographer at the University of London, says he believes that talented people are jumping countries at a record rate. Mr. Salt, who specializes in studying the mobility of the highly skilled, believes this is partly because of the ease of travel and communications today; the high demand for certain skills, such as engineering, computer programming and nursing; and the apparent payoff from harvesting foreign talent.

      Some workers also are being offered sizable inducements to become globe-trotters. Mr. Gulcher, for example, has stock options in DeCode, a company that could go public.

      Skills of Centuries Past

      Of course, it is far from unprecedented for countries to look outside their borders for talent. In classical times, some of the finest teachers in Athens came from elsewhere in Greece. In the 1400s, Spain hired Italians to captain its ships. During the Industrial Revolution, France and Germany lured away top English technicians and engineers to catch up on factory methods. In the 20th century, the American movie industry’s global dominance owed much to a decision by the best European talent to move to Hollywood.

      More recently, high-tech industries in the U.S. have drawn deeply on foreign talent. Roughly a third of Silicon Valley’s engineers are foreign-born. And a good portion of the region’s entrepreneurs come from abroad. The U.S. in some cases has managed to avoid crippling talent shortages by importing employees. A couple of years ago, the government doubled the number of so-called H1-B visas, which are mainly for technical talent. Congress now is

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