… And then some. An eight-hour whirlwind tour of Seattle gave the wife and writer a glimpse of this city – home to some of the world’s most recognizable brands and, as important, is the culture of innovation that they share.
It was to dovetail the Alaska cruise they took – that started in Vancouver and eleven days later concluded in Seward, a two-hour drive to Anchorage. And before flying back home (NY suburb) the couple spent a day in Seattle, where a niece and her husband live. [She’s a product of Enderun in BGC and works at Four Seasons, while he is a techie in a cloud-service provider.]
But let’s get back to the above subject-referenced brands. And a good starting point is the Microsoft Visitor Center. “Who could have imagined? We started as a handful of people creating BASIC in a small office in Albuquerque in 1975. Today we’re a global company with tens of thousands of employees working to create the next generation of breakthrough technologies. We had high hopes back in those early days, but we never imagined we’d achieve something of this magnitude.”
As the writer was reading this visual display – which had a group photo of eleven individuals that included Bill Gates and Paul Allen – he was thinking of the Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, and her body of work re the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset that Bill Gates wrote about in his blog. And Dweck’s treatise has become part of the Microsoft culture.
And then came another display. “Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
Does that mission statement go against the grain of Juan de la Cruz, i.e., to value rank and its privileges? More to the point: “We are parochial and insular. We value hierarchy and the paternalism it brings. And we rely on political patronage and oligarchy given the spoils they bestow. That when all is said and done, we bite the bullet – aka a culture of impunity.”
Consider this John F. Kenney quote from 1962 in The Museum of Flight at Boeing: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.” “Pwede na ang OFW remittances.” [Especially to the elite class given we partake of the spoils?]
Does the contrast speak to why we’re the regional laggard? No wonder Arangkada is no longer talked about – not even by our business periodicals? And if at all, our opinion makers continue to defend our worldview. Because we personify what Christians are meant to be? Or does wisdom reside in Juan de la Cruz? Gising bayan!
We in the elite class – where leaders in both public and private sectors come from – must own up to the predicament of Juan de la Cruz. We’ve held Juan de la Cruz hostage – given our rank and its privileges – for too long. Think Rizal: He who submits to tyranny loves it.
The niece’s husband showed the wife and writer how to shop in the AmazonGo store. It is a facet of the future of AI. For starters, it is cashless. A patron uses her ID (magnetic) card like a key to enter; and that triggers the countless sensors in the store to effectively host and shadow the shopper. Pick an item off a shelf, pick another one and another … and then at the exit lane, tap the scanner with your Amazon card and presto! Call it superefficient – in and out of the store in no time.
Here’s a quote re AI in the Microsoft Visitor Center: “The Seeing AI team created a free app that uses speech to illuminate the world around the user … While originally built for people who have low vision, many people who have full vision are using Seeing AI for things like language learning, or teaching people who have learning disabilities, harnessing the power of AI to open up the visual world to all.”
In other words, like everything else – or wherever, remember Eden and the Last Supper? – there is always the credit and the debit sides. That is why people grow up and develop. But we Pinoys are stuck in poverty – and the war on poverty – that is, sadly, undermining our ability to see beyond the horizon. And why development is not in our psyche?
Here’s another facet of AI from Microsoft: “The world’s population will reach 10 billion by 2050 and studies predict we’ll need to double the food we grow to feed our growing numbers. One solution is precision agriculture, together with the cloud and artificial intelligence … FarmBeats uses Window 10 loT Core and the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to determine how much water and fertilizer crops need and can measure this down to the individual plant. Machine learning algorithms analyze data from hundreds of sensors to predict future farm conditions, enabling farmers to make informed decisions about what to plant, when and where, to maximize yields.”
And back in Bulgaria, the writer’s friends are into AI too as they are constantly elevating efficiencies in the factories and warehouses – via robotics, for example, and other systems-based models. They translate to higher margins and raise their ability to be globally competitive. And since they’ve developed more product categories they have likewise expanded the production facilities (to seven) and employ more people. There is also a knock-on effect on their partners given the demands on the supply chain both locally and in their ever-expanding global market.
This is one way to illustrate the multiplier effect of investment on growth and prosperity which we in the Philippines have failed to leverage because of our reliance on OFW remittances and the BPO industry. Neither can match the multiplier effect of an industrial economy. The bottom line: Foresight. Which comes from: (a) looking outward and forward, not inward and backward; and (b) learning to overcome a fixed or static mindset and embracing a growth or dynamic mindset.
And to illustrate its impact, we can quote from “The McKinsey Global Institute Report - September 2018: Eighteen of 71 countries outperformed their peers and global benchmarks: We analyzed the per capita GDP growth of 71 economies over 50 years, starting in 1965. Of these, we identified 18 as outperformers …
“Collectively, these outperformers have been the engine for lifting one billion people out of extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as living on less than $1.90 per day. Rising prosperity in these countries has not just reduced poverty but has also enabled the emergence of a new wave of middle and affluent classes. Between 1990 and 2013, the number of people living in extreme poverty in the 71 emerging economies fell from 1.84 billion to 766 million. Outperformers accounted for almost 95 percent of that change.
“Less than 11 percent of the world’s population now lives in extreme poverty, down from 35 percent in 1990.
“At the same time, growing numbers of residents of these countries joined the ‘consuming class’—that is, people with incomes high enough to become significant consumers of goods and services. In India, for example, the number of consuming-class households rose tenfold in two decades, from 3.4 million in 1995 to more than 35 million in 2016. Globally, these highly urbanized consumers have become a powerful motor for global economic growth. Outperformers accounted for almost half of the growth in household spending of all emerging economies in the past 20 years.”
And let’s get back to Seattle. At 1912 Pike Place in Seattle is the first Starbucks store that goes back to 1971. It’s a tiny coffee shop, smaller than the first Shoe Mart store (1958.) In 2017 there were over 27,000 Starbucks stores worldwide. And in 2018 it is ranked among the most innovative companies under the category of Social Good.
“In recent years, the company has focused on reshaping its business model in ways that do more social good. That includes a partnership with Feeding America to donate 100% of all daily leftovers to nearby community groups--an effort that’s expected to decrease the company’s food waste and provide 50 million meals annually by the time it scales in 2020. In 2017, Starbucks committed to hiring 10,000 refugees at stores in areas where they’ve resettled, while continuing to open cafes to provide jobs and boost development in economically depressed cities around the United States. Current spots, including Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore; and Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, among others, are already up and running.”
Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon and Starbucks – innovative and globally competitive enterprises – as well as our neighbors ... can all claim to be homes of best practice models that we Pinoys can shamelessly steal.
But where to Philippines?
“Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.” [We are ruled by Rizal’s ‘tyrants of tomorrow,’ Editorial, The Manila Times, 29th Dec 2015]
“Now I know why Paul dared to speak of ‘the curse of the law’ (Galatians 3:13). Law reigns and discernment is unnecessary, which means there is little growth or change in such people. When you do not grow, you remain an infant.” [Faith and Science, Open to Change, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, 23rd Oct 2017]
“As a major component for the education and reorientation of our people, mainstream media – their reporters, writers, photographers, columnists and editors – have an obligation to this country . . .” [Era of documented irrelevance: Mainstream media, critics and protesters, Homobono A. Adaza, The Manila Times, 25th Nov 2015]
“National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country’s natural endowments, its labor pool, its interest rates, or its currency’s value, as classical economics insists . . . A nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade.” [The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review, March–April 1990]
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” [William Pollard, 1911-1989, physicist-priest, Manhattan Project]
“Development [is informed by a people’s] worldview, cognitive capacity, values, moral development, self-identity, spirituality, and leadership . . .” [Frederic Laloux, Reinventing organizations, Nelson Parker, 2014]
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