As the West starts to brush its knees off after the ‘great recession’ China’s economy remains afloat thanks to Beijing’s $585 billion dollar spending spree. China’s stimulus package intends to boost, in part, domestic spending and give business leaders room for a deep breath as their exports dwindle or, in cases, completely stop. So far it’s working to a degree…
Tag: china
Question: What country is home to the largest reality TV show that’s focused on entrepreneurship and capitalism?
Answer: China.
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Reality TV competitions originated and have been perfected in America. Now, oddly, the genre’s largest expression can be found in China and it’s aptly called Win in China.
Win in China pits China’s best and brightest entrepreneurs against each other for a 10 Million RMB in business-start-up money. Contestants are judged, in part, by a panel of China’s top business leaders, including Jake Ma (founder of Alibaba: See him here, please) and by public popularity/votes.
In its inaugural season, according to The Atlantic’s China Correspondant James Fallows, Song Wenming won top prize for his service that promises to help perpetually under-employed people find work in his native Anhui province. Mr. Wenming barely defeated a proud pregnant woman and a passionate man, nick-named “Wolf”, who never finished high school.
Win in China’s premise is not new–it’s been done in the UK (Dragon’s Den) and in the US (The Apprentice, Shark Tank). Win in China’s novelty rests in the values it enforces, supports, and champions. In other words, the show surprises Chinese and Western audiences by celebrating the virtues of capitalism–smack in the middle of a communist-turned-socialist capital city.
Further, the show gives us a chance to look at the leadership skills demonstrated by some of China’s budding talents. Quick wits, calm demeanor, limitless creativity, and pools of industry knowledge are the traits China’s populace and business leaders vote for. The show’s popularity will teach a new generation about what it takes to be a strong business person and successful leader.
China’s creativity and entrepreneurial spirit have been questioned in the past. However, as Win in China is revealing, China’s ability to innovate and create won’t be easily written off in the coming years.
The show highlights some of the dramatic shifts within Chinese culture and it’s prompted Robert A. Compton to direct a recent documentary called “Win in China”, which takes the show’s reality-TV frame to tell a larger, maybe more important, story. The film promises to explore the tensions within Chinese culture and the dramatic changes are created from them. Enjoy the trailer and check it out:
The first Gulf War legitimized and brought to the public the viability of the 24-hour news channel, and CNN hit its stride. This past week, the tipping point came for Twitter and Facebook. If history is our guide, we will soon see these social technologies embedded in our communication culture. After this past week, these technologies will no longer be tools for teen communication but tools for governments, organizations, and business. These tools have their limitations. They demand from the viewer a sensitivity to context and the capacity to filter what is broadcast. When stores are so raw, so open, and so honest as the ones coming out of Iran reality hits us in our face. The danger however, is what happens when the social technology becomes a bit more controlled.
Social media doesn’t go through filters or editors–that means it’s fast, direct, and potentially incorrect or unconfirmed. In the age of Twitter the plausibility of a fake story being perpetuated, in the vein of Orson Welles, throughout the Internet is more than likely. It’s just a matter of thinking up a good fake news story.
Social media has created a platform for spontaneous truth, however at the same time a platform for controlled pranks. In the hands of the unscrupulous, it can become the source not only of rumors but of misdirection and false alarm. While we gain access to more news, we are forced to employ more analysis.
This can also have repercussions in the business world for both leaders and consumers. This month the electronic products company, Belkin, was caught using comment features on blogs and stores like Amazon.com to write fake, positive, ‘customer’ reviews about their poorly functioning products so they would sell. Again, we have gained access to more products but we are forced to exercise more caution as we shop online.
We have learned, in part, to gather news stories and product information from blogs, Twitter, Flickr, and Youtube. However, as we have seen, social media platforms are susceptible to unconfirmed information. Social media allows companies to present their corporate culture, products, and future ideas in an honest and direct light. If companies try to go beyond being honest and direct they risk losing face in front of a ever-growing number of online users. The same rule applies to governments. We need only to look at China’s and Iran’s efforts to control information perpetuated by social media outlets and the resulting bad press they receive.
Social technology demands a certain openness, honesty, and rawness as we’ve seen coming out of Iran the past few days. It demands candor and implies a democratization of information. Unfortunately, it may be the case that some countries may choose, in their paranoid moment, to control the technology–killing its spontaneity and thus, in many ways, reducing its importance.
Just wanted to say that this is the 102nd blog entry here at bacharachblog.com! Thanks for reading and be sure to subscribe or follow me on twitter. Now lets get to the leadership links…
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