Eradicating noise pollution during take-off via…

… a sound barrier (picture).

The goal of this ongoing project is to find a way to reduce low frequency noise pollution emitted by aircraft during take-off at Schiphol’s Polder runway (NB.: A polder is an area of low-lying land, especially in the Netherlands, that has been reclaimed from a body of water and is protected by dikes).

A design contest called “Creating a Sound Barrier” was launched in 2009 by Amsterdam Schiphol Airport authorities. It involved nine companies and twenty seven men and women. The winner of the design project is an architecture firm called Brandes en Meurs.

Crumbling infrastructure threatens global distribution

August 2010, Chinese road users experienced a 100km-long queue on the Beijing-Tibet expressway (see picture). The motorway was blocked due to extensive road works to repair damage caused by a massive increase in cargo lorries, many of which carry coal from Inner Mongolia to the factories and power stations around the capital.

The Beijing-Tibet traffic jam illustrates the current situation of the supply chain industry. The increasing globalization of the world’s economy helped firms to cut their costs significantly by giving them the opportunity to do business with suppliers who can offer them the best goods at the most competitive prices.

But globalization has also stretched these companies’ supply chains. And with “just in time” manufacturing techniques, it has made them much more vulnerable to problems created by crumbling infrastructure around the world.

This crumbling infrastructure is characterised by:

• trade flows increasing faster than the money spent on expanding and maintaining infrastructure
• changing urban demographics which have begun to strain existing road and railway networks beyond their limits (e.g. China as seen above)
• the global financial crisis which has contributed in slowing down the pace of infrastructure expenditures.

“It is important for companies that export globally or rely on key raw materials and parts from overseas that they include infrastructure risk in their strategic planning. The simplest way to assess your vulnerability is to ask how much would it cost in lost sales if one of your key suppliers fails to deliver or if your goods were held up in transit.” (The Economy News UK)

Soft skills make good (global) managers

Today, cross-cultural management is a reality in business.

With the incredibly fast growth rate of information technology and transport the world is now one big village where a woman from Norway can be in charge of a local business unit in Indonesia.

Hard skills – which are abilities that measure one’s technical efficiency in a given field – are no longer sufficient to ensure the viability of a business when culture is part of the equation. Tertiary level schools have started including courses on intercultural communication in order to develop soft skills for future global managers (NB.: I personally attend to cross-cultural management classes at school).

Soft skills can be described as a combination of:

• strong work ethic
• time management abilities
• flexibility-adaptability
• problem-solving skills
• and good communication skills.

To read more on the topic of soft skills and how they are intertwined with cross-cultural management, please read Nancy Longatan’s very informative article.

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Aujourd’hui, le management culturel est devenu indispensable pour toute entreprise jouant sur la scène internationale.

Le rétrécissement des frontières, la croissance exponentielle des NTIC et la mobilité grandissante des hommes font que les cultures se rencontrent et s’inscrivent dans le monde des affaires. Et pour mieux gérer les différences culturelles, il est primordial pour un manager de développer ses qualités humaines dites “soft skills“.

Hello world!

I am an undergraduate in his third and final year of business school. I live and study in France but I was raised in Nigeria.

The main objective of my blog, At the crossroads of globalization, is to set up a business-oriented journal that will be focused on:

• cross-cultural management
• global distribution management
• and the latest info on the global Energy industry.

This web log is also a way for me to showcase my personal experiences, competences and professional aspirations.

More updates to come shortly.

PS: My published articles will be written in English but I will also try to provide brief recaps in French.

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Je suis étudiant en 3e année d’école de commerce (niveau master 2). Je fais mes études en France mais j’ai grandi au Nigeria.

Le but de ce blog, At the crossroads of globalization (i.e. Au carrefour de la mondialisation), est de publier des articles qui portent sur:

• le management culturel
• le management de la distribution internationale
• et les dernières informations sur le secteur de l’énergie à l’échelle mondiale.

Ce journal est aussi une occasion pour moi de mettre en avant mes qualités personnelles, compétences et aspirations professionnelles.

De nouveaux articles seront publiés très prochainement.