Our World Today Is Flat
At the last week of June, my family decided to take a vacation in Manila and visited me here in Cabanatuan. It was very exciting to see them together with my fairy god mother riding in a private car. As we eat together our lunch at around 2pm my mother simply can’t help but made fun of what he sees in my environment that I stay in. It was like her old town in Midsayap, Cotabato where everything is simple and not too modern as compared to Davao.
I can’t blame her if she acts that way because she is my mother and she’s simply concern about the future that I am heading thru.
Why go through all the trouble of working in a messed up company and considering a location where everything seems to be 10 years behind my own hometown? I can offer a very brief answer: because I could and because I must. Precisely because at the start of my career when I was still an employee I have been working with this project since the beginning and I was quite familiar with their flow. That is what I mean when I say I could. The reason I must do it is threefold: First, because of powerful technological forces that drive me nuts, it really kept me wondering if I could actually build something as awesome as those tools and perhaps maybe inherit the power of changing the world. Second, I wanted to know how true was these words are while I was given a lecture during my college years: “You will never shine at your own land.” So I could really find what reality is really all about. Finally, I found many of the comments from parents and friends both frustrating and disappointing. I wanted to prove that they are all wrong. At some point I may pay the risk of dreaming too much and will probably stop and face reality. But for now. I am just enjoying the chance to keep sharing what I am learning.
When I set sail, so to speak, I too assumed that the world is round, but what I encountered in the world of technology profoundly shook my faith in the notion.
No one ever gave me directions like on how to put your own company and run them as if they were your precious. What I know was at the back of my mind something big is holding me into this sanity: “Aim at either Microsoft or Infosys.”
As I work my way on my project, integrating one department to the other, providing security information on the database, reducing papers by means of automatic job orders, and building modules that would allow customer relation officers respond to every questions that the customer ask in a very efficient way. When all of these things suddenly came together, I have created a platform where intellectual work and intellectual people could be delivered in a messed up corporate.
At one point, summing up the implication of this, an idea uttered a light bulb that rang in my ear “The playing field is now being leveled. The world was being flattened.” What I meant is independent and passionate worker can now able to compete for global knowledge work as never before.
Using computers and dynamic software’s it is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time, build empires and change the world. This is what I call the flat-world platform.
As a result, every person now must, and can, ask: Where do I as an individual fit into the global competition and opportunities of, the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally?
Needless to say, I had to think about practicality and deal with reality on how true is this flat-world platform concept is. I wanted to drop the fantasy thoughts and try to deal with facts of life about my own country Philippines. I live in a third world country, I live in a country where people prefers to live in a different country, I live in a country where we belong to the second most corrupt country in Asia, I guess I just live in a country where everything is hopeless just like the company that I am serving now. It’s too much risk.
But, in every risk that I see, I also see opportunities. Being the third world provides an edge to most first world country for we provide lower labor cost and hard working skills, overseas foreign workers are a very good source of angel investors, corruption is inevitable and besides you don’t need governments to build your empire, you just need clients instead. True leaders are not born nor inherit the gifts of their royal blood, they are built and crafted by the test of time.
Change is hard. Change is hardest on those caught by surprise. Change is hardest on those who have difficulty changing too. But, change is natural; Change is not new; Change is important.
Those who can create value through leadership, relationship, and creativity will transform the industry, as well as control his destiny on how he wants to live with it.
As I look at innovation and how the flattening of the world has happened faster and change rules, roles, and relationships more quickly than social science can capture. And, though I know it is a cliché’, I have to say it nevertheless: “You aint seen nothing yet.” We are entering a phase where we are going to see the digitization, virtualization, and automation more and more everything.
Today is a much broader, more profound phenomenon in the world of information technology.
And that is why the great challenge for our times will be to absorb these changes in ways that do not overwhelm people or leave them behind. None of this will be easy. But this is our task. It is inevitable and unavoidable.
I can’t blame her if she acts that way because she is my mother and she’s simply concern about the future that I am heading thru.
Why go through all the trouble of working in a messed up company and considering a location where everything seems to be 10 years behind my own hometown? I can offer a very brief answer: because I could and because I must. Precisely because at the start of my career when I was still an employee I have been working with this project since the beginning and I was quite familiar with their flow. That is what I mean when I say I could. The reason I must do it is threefold: First, because of powerful technological forces that drive me nuts, it really kept me wondering if I could actually build something as awesome as those tools and perhaps maybe inherit the power of changing the world. Second, I wanted to know how true was these words are while I was given a lecture during my college years: “You will never shine at your own land.” So I could really find what reality is really all about. Finally, I found many of the comments from parents and friends both frustrating and disappointing. I wanted to prove that they are all wrong. At some point I may pay the risk of dreaming too much and will probably stop and face reality. But for now. I am just enjoying the chance to keep sharing what I am learning.
When I set sail, so to speak, I too assumed that the world is round, but what I encountered in the world of technology profoundly shook my faith in the notion.
No one ever gave me directions like on how to put your own company and run them as if they were your precious. What I know was at the back of my mind something big is holding me into this sanity: “Aim at either Microsoft or Infosys.”
As I work my way on my project, integrating one department to the other, providing security information on the database, reducing papers by means of automatic job orders, and building modules that would allow customer relation officers respond to every questions that the customer ask in a very efficient way. When all of these things suddenly came together, I have created a platform where intellectual work and intellectual people could be delivered in a messed up corporate.
At one point, summing up the implication of this, an idea uttered a light bulb that rang in my ear “The playing field is now being leveled. The world was being flattened.” What I meant is independent and passionate worker can now able to compete for global knowledge work as never before.
Using computers and dynamic software’s it is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time, build empires and change the world. This is what I call the flat-world platform.
As a result, every person now must, and can, ask: Where do I as an individual fit into the global competition and opportunities of, the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally?
Needless to say, I had to think about practicality and deal with reality on how true is this flat-world platform concept is. I wanted to drop the fantasy thoughts and try to deal with facts of life about my own country Philippines. I live in a third world country, I live in a country where people prefers to live in a different country, I live in a country where we belong to the second most corrupt country in Asia, I guess I just live in a country where everything is hopeless just like the company that I am serving now. It’s too much risk.
But, in every risk that I see, I also see opportunities. Being the third world provides an edge to most first world country for we provide lower labor cost and hard working skills, overseas foreign workers are a very good source of angel investors, corruption is inevitable and besides you don’t need governments to build your empire, you just need clients instead. True leaders are not born nor inherit the gifts of their royal blood, they are built and crafted by the test of time.
Change is hard. Change is hardest on those caught by surprise. Change is hardest on those who have difficulty changing too. But, change is natural; Change is not new; Change is important.
Those who can create value through leadership, relationship, and creativity will transform the industry, as well as control his destiny on how he wants to live with it.
As I look at innovation and how the flattening of the world has happened faster and change rules, roles, and relationships more quickly than social science can capture. And, though I know it is a cliché’, I have to say it nevertheless: “You aint seen nothing yet.” We are entering a phase where we are going to see the digitization, virtualization, and automation more and more everything.
Today is a much broader, more profound phenomenon in the world of information technology.
And that is why the great challenge for our times will be to absorb these changes in ways that do not overwhelm people or leave them behind. None of this will be easy. But this is our task. It is inevitable and unavoidable.
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