“Shift Happens”

Here’s an interesting video about global competition and information technology that has been making the rounds recently. If you haven’t seen it, take a look. It’s about six minutes long. And–to borrow a phrase from President Destler–it’s a good “conversation starter” even though it is open to criticism for making some simplistic predictions. http://www.glumbert.com/media/shift

Some messages I took away from “Shift Happens”:

1. There are a lot of smart people in the world which increases the global talent pool and leads to increasing competition for our students.
2. Information technology (IT) makes it possible to gather and use tremendous amounts of information.
3. As a result, this year’s incoming freshmen will be “career changers,” and as alumni will work in several occupations some of which have yet to be defined.
4. These observations have significant implications for how and what we teach.

Fortunately, here in the United States and more specifically in Rochester, IT and global resources are being effectively deployed and managed by many organizations. Let me share some recent information:

• The United States is one of the most productive countries in the world. A recent report by the International Labor Organization (Key Issues in the Labor Market, 5th ed., 2007) reveals the output per worker in the US was almost $64K compared to a global average of almost $20K. The second most productive country was Ireland with $56K per worker, almost 15% less. Some of our productivity advantage can be attributed to US labor putting in longer hours. But some of the gain can surely be attributed to effective deployment of information technology: Indeed, an earlier ILO conference noted that “research almost incontrovertibly shows that the considerable US investments in computers and information technology in the past two decades have now started to pay off in terms of US productivity increases.”

• Rochester businesses are also effective users of IT. It is well known that Kodak and Xerox rely heavily on IT to develop innovative products and manage their supply chains. But several smaller

Rochester companies also use information technology effectively. For example, Constellation Brands is the world’s largest producer of wine. The July 23, 2007 issue of Supply Excellence looks at its use of web technologies to manage their supplier base. Also, Sutherland Global Services is a leading Business Process Outsourcing provider with more than 17,000 employees worldwide. In February 2007 Global Services ranked it second on a list of 100 Best Performing Managed Services Providers.

So, US businesses – including Rochester businesses – are adept at harnessing the power of IT. Rochester Institute of Technology is also investing to provide the best to our students. With the recent emphasis on homeland security, the nationally recognized Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences (GCCIS) has developed new programs, resulting in the National Security Agency honoring it as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education. Also, responding to growth in the health services industry, RIT invested in a professor-in-residence program enables students to work on co-ops dealing with applications of IT at Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Closer to home, the Saunders College has professors conducting research and working closely with businesses that use IT to support the work of virtual teams and to extend their supply chains to Asian and African countries. We are also using information technology in exciting new ways for education based on state-of-the-art platforms such as Cold Fusion and Second Life. Our goal is to prepare our students to prosper in the fast-changing and competitive global business environment described in the video “Shift Happens”.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 10:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.