Facts and Myths in the Globalization Debate: How Our National Policies are often Misguided and How the United States Can Continue to Keep Its Global Edge
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Few topics provoke more heated debate than globalization. Globalization is considered essential for companies that want to survive in today's economy, but it is also blamed for job losses and the economic decline of the United States. Executives say they hire from abroad because of deficiencies in the U.S. workforce and skills shortages, while worker advocacy groups say it is all about cheap labor.
Wadhwa will discuss how the contentious public debates on globalization and outsourcing commonly use data that isn't grounded in reality. He will show why globalization and outsourcing are the new reality and how this trend will continue to build even more momentum. Finally, Wadhwa will provide concrete advice and ideas on how the United States can regain its edge in the global economy by understanding the new reality and focusing on its strengths such as entrepreneurship and innovation. By effectively harnessing its highly educated and skilled workforce, and balancing immigrant intellectual capital, the United States can continue to be the winner rather than the victim of globalization.
Vivek Wadhwa, currently a visiting scholar at UC-Berkeley, is a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and an executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. He helps students prepare for the real world, lectures in class and leads groundbreaking research projects. He advises several start-up companies, writes a column for BusinessWeek.com and contributes to several international publications. Since joining Duke in 2005, he has researched globalization, its impact on the engineering profession and the sources of the United States' competitive advantage. Mr. Wadhwa holds an MBA from New York University and a BA in Computing Studies from the Canberra University in Australia.
Philippines Conference Room
Vivek Wadhwa
Senior Research Associate
Speaker
Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School
Seminars
Peter Semmelhack on open source hardware innovation
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Peter Semmelhack, founder of BugLabs, spoke about his company's goal to make hardware as malleable as software, freeing people to create the devices that meet their needs and improve quality of life.
While the Open Source movement has enabled rapid progress in the field of software in recent years, hardware innovation lags behind. The way that hardware products come to market is time consuming and expensive for all. A number of factors mean that only big multinational players tend to be able to survive in this space:
- Research and development and distribution of mass market products is an extremely expensive process
- The upfront investment required to develop a new product is very high: typically it takes one year and a million dollars to produce just one prototype
- To get a high enough price point you have to produce at a very large scale
- Average returns tend to diminish significantly after about two years
However, there are big opportunities outside of mass market products, Peter argues. In the areas of healthcare and energy management, for example, there are niche markets for products with very specific uses. If an efficient platform could be used to develop these niche products, there are potentially as many gains in the ‘long tail' of the electronics market as in the mass market products such as DVD players and mobile phones.
Bug Labs provides an open source, modular system for hardware that enables businesses and individuals to innovate in a way that is affordable. Bugmodules, which include GPS, 3G, speakers and motion sensors, are designed to be clicked together to build new products with unique combinations of functionality. This approach frees individuals to start creating the specific gadgets they need in a low cost, efficient way. Users can then add to their device any number of online applications created and shared by the BUG Community.
The BUG system can also be used to create products with specific social uses. For example, BUG4good is a handheld device designed to enable human rights workers to capture material (video, photograph etc) in such a way that it can be used as official evidence in the courts in Geneva. With total demand of just a few hundred units, this is not a market a large technology company would be likely to serve.
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Comparing health systems through the lens of pharmaceutical policy: A new book
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How do countries in the vast and diverse Asia-Pacific region differ in “prescribing cultures”? How do health systems in the region balance access to pharmaceuticals with incentives for innovation? How do the forces of globalization shape, and in turn are shaped by, cultural legacies about health and health care? These are the key questions addressed by the new Asia Health Policy Program book, Prescribing Cultures and Pharmaceutical Policy in the Asia Pacific.
AHPP held a book launch event September 23rd with three authors of the book detailing how pharmaceutical policies are interlinked globally and at the same time deeply rooted in local culture.
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