Oil to bypass Singapore

I’ve written a lot in the past about the development of the Irrawaddy in Myanmar. One of the effects would be the diversion of oil shipments heading for Asia, and China in particular. This is driven by China’s concern about the vulnerability of its economically vital oil imports to piracy in the Straits of Malacca – and, presumably, to naval interdiction by the US in the event of future conflict.

Other people have now seen an opportunity: the IHT today carries a report about Malaysia and Indonesia cooperating on a pipeline that will ship oil from port to port across the Malaysia peninsula. This means that tankers from the Middle East will only go as far as Malaysia; new Malaysian refineries will process the crude oil, and other tankers will shuttle between Malaysia and East Asia to transfer the refined products. This cuts the Straits of Malacca out of the oil route -  and that means, much less oil refining business for Singapore. Not entirely: the pipeline will only take up to a third of the oil currently passing through the Straits – but who knows about the future? I don’t have time just now to find accurate figures, but oil refining is an important part of the local economy, IIRC. I wonder how much of an impact this will have on the economy here?

Migration patterns of white-collar jobs

I’ve been singing the praises of IBM recently, from a social technologies point of view, because of the way they’re using tools like Second Life and Xing. A lot of this is aimed at their growing workforce in China, and I guess India isn’t far behind.

Of course, there’s a downside: this is the migration of those jobs from the West, especially, the US, to cheaper developing economies. In IBM’s case, this has become very controversial following Bob Cringely’s series of articles on IBM’s LEAN process.  I took the time yesterday to read the comment thread on his previous article on the topic, and it’s very interesting from an MBA point of view.

Naturally, businesses seek to cut costs; this is natural. However, of course, you don’t do this if you have a good reason to go the other way and charge a premium. IBM seems to have been in the latter category: the huge amount of experience, domain-specific knowledge, and talent that the company could draw on gave excellent value for money even if the  price was higher. If these comments are representative, however, it seems that the current IBM management are cutting their most knowledgable (and most expensive) employees in order to cut costs, and replacing them with cheaper – because inexperienced – hires in developing economies such as Argentina, South Africa, and of course Asia.

This seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater: employee costs are reduced, but customer satisfaction is also plummeting, because the exit of specialised knowledge leads to longer problem resolution times. It seems many customers won’t be renewing their contracts – and at the same time, the remaining talent at IBM is overworked, demoralised, and looking for an exit. IF those comments are representative. If they are, then the future doesn’t look so rosy for Big Blue.

On a broader scope, though, this outsourcing of white-collar jobs is still gathering steam. A common complaint, and one that relates to the IBM comments, is that the Asian employees getting the new jobs are unable to think creatively, and can only do exactly what they are told to do – even if there are errors that they are expected to detect.  It’s something I’ve referred to before, and certainly applies even here in Singapore.

I’m talking about this because I’ve just been looking at old posts, and see that even in 2003 I was looking at this trend and wondering where I would fit in – and how I would react to it.  Taking the MBA was my response, of course.

As I think about this, I can perhaps see a niche evolving where  I could see an opportunity… got to start planning for the next few years…

E-China rising

Asia Times has a good piece on the consequences of the rising networked society in China, including this choice quote:

It is estimated that Chinese youth will become the most powerful purchasing force in the world within the next 20 years. In China’s current environment of evolving technologies and media fragmentation, these consumers are in command of their buying behavior and entertainment choices more than ever before. As increasing numbers of Chinese go online to work, play and offload their disposable income, China’s e-revolution is throwing up fresh opportunities and challenges to marketers, and spawning new ways for the nation’s netizens to escape the mundane reality of non-virtual life.

Note to self: get in touch with that Mandarin tutor ASAP…

Skype prime, and networked China

For aspiring freelancers and knowledge workers this looks to have a lot of potential: Skype Prime apparently allows you to advertise your expertise on specific topics, and to charge people for your advice. What a pity that I know nothing of value to anyone – only a vast amount of useless trivia!

I found out about this via a post on Preetam’s blog, which has other interesting snippets. For example he finds that the Chinese he meets usually put their chat address on their business cards. I wondered about this when I printed my own personal cards: should I include MSN and Skype information? In the end, I didn’t – I already go through periods of being invited to join the friends list of Chinese people I’ve never met, and I usually refuse. Perhaps I should set up accounts that I only advertise on my cards, though. Not sure, I’ll have to think about that: Preetam is right when he says “This chat thing is changing the way we work and learn and maybe even earn”. I need to think a bit more about my positioning first, though.

That reminds me of two articles I saw recently on Web Worker Daily:

• Three steps to introduce social software to your employer
•  The dangerous myth of the dream job

Biotech news

It’s been a while since my last post. Partly I’ve been just really busy getting up to speed with the new job; partly that I’ve been getting a lot of new insights into Singaporean life and culture, and I’ve been processing it all; and partly, I’ve had to be learning very quickly about some new ‘areas of expertise’. Anyway, I hope to resume more regular blogging!

Let’s kick off with some interesting biotech news:

•  Australian scientists are developing nanotech-based cancer treatments that specifically target cancer cells, and could do away with the need for blunt treatments like chemotherapy.
• British scientists develop artificial blood. It’s intended for emergency uses where real blood is not available for transfusions, but I wonder what other uses will be found…?