A chance to learn from a very smart person.....

I attended a Kenan-Flagler event last night, free to anyone who chose to attend.

It is a wonderful example of the kind of local resources we have in this are, most of which go overlooked or at least missed by most people.

Peter BREWS, a professor at Kenan-Flagler, talked about megatrends in business. Even for someone who has followed these issues fairly closely, this was an eye-opener.

Some notes that I took.....

Only 25% of the global population today - 6 billion or so - is really "in" the global marketplace as we know it. That leaves 75% en route.

1970 is the dividing point in terms of global production -- the amount of "stuff" that we have produced since 1970 is equal to the total amount produced in all time prior to 1970. That really got my attention!

To bring those "in" and "out" into perspective, the world's two largest countries - India and China - have 800-900 million each trying to get "in". Only about 25% of each country has so far joined the rest of the world in this marketplace. The oppportunities, and of course the risks, are immense.

BREWS highly recommended we all read the Stern Review on global warming. You can access it here.

The mantra for succeeding today is very much to do it better, faster, cheaper, different and - he emphasized many times - cleaner.

For example, he thinks that companies around the world will be tracking the footprints of their employees as they grossly add to global warming every time they get on an airplane.

BREWS talked about the evolution in most countries from being supply seeking to becoming market seeking.

There is an ongoing re-pricing of the value of work underway everywhere whether we realize it or not.

It is far better - essential - to innovate faster than simply to replicate.

His pie chart of the world includes the globalizers, the anti-globalists, and the hopeful majority. It's a fascinating analysis that makes huge sense.

Inevitably over the next 10 years, we will see our share of consumption of global resources reduce dramatically to what may be our 400 million population's proportional share of a globe with 8 billion people.

Two highly important trends in the US are its browning and its graying.

Today, he believes, some 35% of the US work force is in the "creative class".

Future trends are toward companies that are less hierarchical, more focused and more networked.

In his review of the Stern Review, he noted - with special connections to NC - that 24% of greenhouse gases are coming from power companies, with 18% from land uses with 14% each for industry and agrriculture.

Before concluding, he turned to a Grant Thornton survey done with Business Week, released 5 July 2007 [I could not find a link to this....]

510 CEOS were surveryed. They came back saying that the environment - in several different ways - was going to be far more important to them in their companies than most would have thought. This has grown dramatically in the past year, BREWS says. There is a dramatic change in mindset underway.

We risk, he fears, that we are seeing a global market failure in global warming. It will take a strong measure of government action in order to deal with this. We will see this increase on a more global level in coming months and years.

The good news in all of this is that the market opportunity ahead is almost as big as the cost.

We - in the US especially - must innovate more in a less destructive way. The Europeans and Japanese are ahead of us already.

Some of the trends he sees as he expressed optimisim about the US ability to become a world in leader in less polluting technology that we and the whole world increasingly need. This is where people who have been in the furniture business in the US ought to re-orient themselves.

Some of those trends....

+ global warming will drive up costs
+ there will be a boom in clean energy
+ consumption models will change
+ US consumption will reduce
+ there will be less global inequality
+ by 2050, the US will still be outdoing most of the rest of the world in productivity, but the gap will have narrowed

There is a need for us in the US to downsize and we will. 25% smaller cars. 25% smaller houses. Etc.

What a fascinating tour du monde this was. It makes me feel very lucky to be here in Chapel Hill and able to hear this presentation. Thousands more ought to have been there......