1.    

Henry Ford and the American Automobile

    Detroit has some of the most beautiful residential neighborhoods in the USA and at the same time some of the most shocking slums. Detroit owes its rapid growth and one-time prosperity to the automobile, and above all to Henry Ford.
    Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, but he was the first man to mass-produce it, and this made it available to the ordinary man. Many automobiles were being built by the hand at the turn of the century and were much too expensive for all but the wealthy. In 1903 Henry Ford's first mass. produced Model T cars cost $850. By the early 1920s he was able to reduce the price to $350. Between 1903 and 1927 Ford manufactured 15 million Model T Fords and earned a profit of $700 million. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. In 1927 he produced his sedan Model A, which was much more comfortable than the open, windswept Model T.
    Henry Ford was himself a born mechanic and could build a car with his own hands. So he respected his workers and treated them well. In 1914, when the basic wage for an industrial worker in Detroit was $11 a week, Ford announced that he would pay his workers $5 a day. Ford believed in the dignity of work, and did not wish his men to become underpaid robots. He also built them a special town on the outskirts of the city. He is credited with "Fordism": mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers.
    Ford's basic wage of $5 a day caused not only a wage explosion in the city, it also caused a population explosion. Blacks from the south poured into the city, until there were almost as many blacks in Detroit as whites. Other industries connected with the automobile were attracted to Detroit, and more and more factories sprang up in and around the city. Other automobile corporations also made Detroit their headquarters. General Motors built factories in Detroit as did Chrysler. In the 1960s, one in three people who lived in Detroit worked in the automobile industry. Now many plants have been dispersed to other parts of the States, and unemployment, particularly among blacks, has become a serious problem.
    But the fortune of the Ford family was already made. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, Ford became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. True to the tradition of the American millionaires, Edsel and Henry Ford Ⅱ gave away half their fortune. They gave $300 million to public education, public television and to social research.
    Americans depend on the automobile like no other people. The total mileage traveled by American motorists in one year is about one million million miles. At the moment a revolution is going on in the American automobile world. In the 1960s there was a change in fashion in favor of small cars. Many small and medium-sized cars are still being imported especially from Germany and Japan. Now American automobile manufacturers have followed the trend. They are committed to building smaller new cars, as part of a program of energy conservation. All new cars, too, are built so that they can only take unleaded gas. Some of the most dangerous pollutants are being removed from the air in American cities. It remains to be seen, however, if the American automobile industry will ever again regain its former glory.

2.    

My Story about Love and Loss

    I was lucky—I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation—the Macintosh—a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired.
    How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling-out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
    I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down—that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me— I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
    I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
    During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
    I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it Don't settle.

3.    

Some Observations on Doing Business in China

    From watching westerners attempting to work in China, I must conclude that Chinese and westerners are not the same. WE and THEY think differently. Westerners think in "prose", each sentence or paragraph following from the preceding. Chinese think in "poetry". where context or setting determines action.
    Western thinking is linear, moving from goals to strategy to tactics. or from overview to details (or the reverse). Chinese put everything in a big pot, stir well, and serve whatever comes up. Discussion of a philosophical goal which implies commitment of millions of dollars may be followed by a question on how some minor component will be shipped.
    In negotiations and other relationships, Americans and Chinese both usually lack sufficient information and cultural background to emphasize well with each other. Chinese businessmen tend to have business negotiations in a rather indirect manner, as opposed to the more direct manner of American businessmen. The Chinese like to take time to learn whether their prospective business contacts are really reliable.
    American businessmen are straightforward, aggressive and pushy for clear-cut definitions of business terms. They tend to be more concerned about their main objective than details. But when it comes to a large project, they are also prepared for lengthy negotiations. The decision-making process of Chinese companies is generally slow and time-consuming. This is because most Chinese companies keep to the "bottom-up, and then top-down" principle. Although Americans have a reputation for making quick decisions, this is not always true when a corporation is embarking oil a major venture, because many people must be involved in the decision-making.
    Americans view relationships in terms of "rights"; Chinese in terms of "obligations" —to family, to one's elders, to the country. Contracts are viewed in this light—the relationship between parties creates obligations. Americans tend to be reserved in relating to strangers; Chinese tend to be reserved with those whom they have connections.
    Chinese perceive Americans don't care about money and waste it; Americans perceive Chinese don't care about time and waste it. Chinese often consider capital investment as "sunk cost", a commitment to do something, rather than a base upon which to earn a certain return.
    Chinese hear different things in what is said. They tend to interpret questions and answer what they thin k you need. Americans tend to answer questions directly and literally, often ignoring important underlying concerns. Chinese often ask questions to expose a concern, not to get an answer.
    So what?
    China will be the largest economy in the world in the near future. No matter what your business, Chinese will comprise a significant portion of your suppliers, your competitors, your customers, your bankers and your stockholders or partners. What is happening in China will have consequences for our entire system。
    Today, many American businessmen are eager to learn more about trade and investment opportunities in China, especially after its accession to the WTO. They and their lawyers now understand that they must study the laws, trade practices and culture of China in order to be more effective in doing business with Chinese trading partners.
    China will not become like US. They will be different. Different than they (or we) are now.

4.    

The World Economic Forum in Davos

    "You're off to the World Economic Forum?" asked the Oxford economist, enviously. "How very impressive. They've never invited me."
    Three days later, I queued in the snow outside the conference center in Davos, standing behind mink coats and cashmere overcoats, watched over by Swiss policemen with machineguns. "Reporting press? You can't come in here. Side entrance, please." I stood in line again, this time behind Puffa jackets and Newsweek journalist, waiting to collect my orange badge. Once inside, I found that the seminar I wanted to go to was being held in a half-empty room. "You can't sit here. All seats are reserved for white badges. Coloured badges have to stand."
    An acquaintance invited me to a dinner he was hosting. "There are people I'd like you to meet." The green-badged Forum employee stopped me at the door. "This is a participants' dinner. Orange badges are not allowed." Then, later, reluctantly: "If you're coming in, please can you turn your badge around? Diners may be upset if they see you're a colour." "Why does anyone put up with being treated like this?" I asked a Financial Times correspondent. "Because we all live in hope of becoming white badges," he said, "Then we'll know what's really going on."
    A leading British businessman was wearing a white badge, but it bore a small logo on the top left. hand corner: GLT. "What is a GLT?" I asked.
    "Ah," he said, "well, it's a Davos club. I'm a Global Leader of Tomorrow."
    "That sounds very important," I said. "Yes," he said, "I thought so myself, until I bumped into the man who'd sponsored me, on the way to my first meeting. I asked him if he was coming, and he said, 'Oh no, dear boy, I don't bother with that any longer. I'm not a GLT any more; I'm an IGWEL.' 'What's an IGWEL?' I asked him. 'A member of the Informal Group of World Economic Leaders of Today,' he said."
    The World Economic Forum has employed a simple psychological truth—that nothing is more desirable than that which excludes us—to brilliant effect. Year after year, its participants apply to return, in the hope that this time they'll be a little closer to the real elite. Next year, they, too, might be invited to the private receptions for Bill Clinton, Kofi Anna or Bill Gates, instead of having to stand on the conference center's steps like teenage rock fans.
    It's the sheer concentration of individuals in possession of power, wealth or knowledge that makes the privately run Forum so desirable to its participants. The thousand chief executives who attend its annual meeting control, between them, more than 70 percent of international trade. Every year, they are joined by a couple of dozen presidents and prime ministers, by senior journalists, a changing selection of leading thinkers, academics and diplomats, and by rising stars of the business world. Access to the meeting is by invitation only, costs several thousand pounds a time for business participants, and is ruthlessly controlled.