Global Playground

posted 2007-03-06 14:42:39
by Tim Lee

As a first-time blog from a guy in solution services, I'd like to extend my warm greetings and thanks to our customers. We have enjoyed working with you over the years, collaborating in the growth of our product, company and industry! Also, a belated: gong xi fa cai / gung hay fat choy.  Let's hope the Year of the Golden Pig is a good one, sparking the best of changes.

The other day, I was thinking about things that transcend language and cultural boundaries. One such thing is sports, of which basketball is my favorite. While March Madness is approaching in college ball, the pro-level is where we find a lot of international talent, with players from over thirty-five different countries in the NBA. The in-flux and mixing of cultures has transformed basketball's game to new levels. For example, what was once a defined position of "Power Forward" has long since been thrown out the window, with guys like German seven-footer, Dirk Nowitzki, firing from three-point range and beyond. In the same way, the globalization of business and culture is not only making the world smaller, but changing it progressively here in the states.

We have also seen that outside the states, basketball has been developed into something big internationally. FIBA has taken an American-born game and continued to adapt it for the global venue; much of it resembles the sport that Americans know and play, but other rules have been changed and tweaked. Our players have had to adapt to international rules to compete at the Olympics and World Basketball Championships. In recent times, the U.S. has fallen short of the gold, while struggling to adapt. In similar fashion, English-speakers hopefully are learning that they have to acclimate to the world workplace to do business. Of course, to globalize doesn’t mean just to change languages, but to fit and sometimes even merge cultures (ever hear Cantonese rap? Yikes! But I digress), and sometimes culture is not just ethnic (e.g. hoop style), and has to be taken into consideration.

I leave you with this, sports-enthusiasts: the commercial for Converse with Dwyane Wade (MVP of the NBA Finals last year) uses the slogan, "Fall down seven times. Get up eight." Did you know that this is actually an old Japanese proverb (nanakorobi yaoki)?

Our life today is infused with multi-cultural influences and the global workplace and community has to adjust. It always amazes me to see our world changing before us. It does so, with or without us. So, we might as well do what we can to make that leap now—with the right tools to achieve it—hopefully, for a slam dunk.

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