SCHMITTblog

Taiwanese Edition of Big Think Strategy Launched

The Taiwanese edition of my book "Big Think Strategy" is now in the bookstores. And here is a link to the website: http://www.bookzone.com.tw/event/cb397/index.asp

After the book promotion and interviews on the weekend, I barely escaped the typhoon that hit Taiwan this morning!!!

Three Asian Cities to Watch

Kolkata. Seoul. Taipei. Those are three Asian cities to watch!  They are not "leading" Asian cities yet, and may never be, given the competition of Shanghai,Tokyo,and Hong Kong.  Yet, on this trip, each of these cities impressed me in  terms of how fast they are turning into top-tier cities.

Kolkata is  of course the weirdo on this list.  I promised you in my prior blog to share my thoughts about it -- and here they are. It is far better than you (foreigner and, yes, Indians) might think.  It was my first visit to Kolkata.  (I was the keynote speaker of Brand Conclave, the prime branding confeence  of the IndianConference of Industries: http://brandconclave.com/). Kolkata, as other Indian cities, is changing rapidly. It may have  been left behind for a while (the region has had a democratically elected communist government for 30 years), but it is now happening. It reminded me, weirdly, of Shanghai in the early 1990s. And, like Shanghai, it has fabulous, albeit run-down,  heritage buildings. It will be awesome when  they get renovated as part of an economic boom.

Seoul, my next stop, for a course at Yonsei University, is a frequent stop of  mine. But on this  trip, for the first time in years, I noted a  huge jump. Seoul really wants to be among the top lifestyle cities in the world, and not just Asia. Lifestyle is really the word here! Just a few years  ago, most new foreign restaurants started to be cool --- but had lousy food. This has  entirely changed. I had my best dinner in  a year  at "The Restaurant."

Taipei, similar to Seoul, modernizes very fast. The "101" building and complex is amazing. It is the tallest building in the world, and all the  major international brands are there. In fact, the entire  area surrounding it, is  a cool indoors and outdoors  lifestyle area. Really impressive, and a  benchmark for modern urban development.

Each city is different in its own way. But all three are on a fast track.

Horse Auctioned Off

Just a quick note that the  Schmitt Shanghai Trojan Horse was  auctioned off at a conference in  Munich. The proceeds will go to an institution that supports children. More  on that soon. I am off to Kolkata (India) for  a branding workshop and a couple of other speaking engagements.  I have  never been to West Begal; so expect a blog from there as well. Enjoy July!

The Singapore Goverment Raps

From Singapore, with love. Check this out on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksw2UqTyhhc

Whover  thought Singapore is  boring??!! This is a rap prepared by senior members of a media  group of the Singapore government!   In all its tackiness,  this is quite cool. A bit too long, but very funny. Maybe they are trying too hard, but they must be complimented for having the guts to do it.

Strategy 3: Traveling for Creativity

The last few weeks were hectic for me, jetting from the U.S. to South America and then to Asia. But it won’t be anything compared to what’s coming up during the next 6 weeks: Europe, Singapore, Japan, India, Korea again, Taiwan, Singapore again, Istanbul. So, I am trying to make the best of it. Preparing a new course on creativity and innovation, it occurs to me how lucky I am. Travel provides constant stimulation. Although I am an office animal rather than a “home gardener” (that is, I arrive at the office at 8 at the latest and stay till 7), the “occasional” trip really stimulates my creative juices. The creativity gurus seem to agree; in fact, Jordan Ayan (author of the book “Aha!”) lists “get out of your box through travel” as “Strategy 3” for creativity.

But, when you do it, you may as well do it right: Get out of your hotel, too!

A Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience

What’s a man supposed to do with a bottle of 1999 Vintage Dom Perignon at 8:40am in the morning in a Tokyo hotel when he has to fly out at noon? That’s the question I pondered, having received the gift after giving a talk to LVMH. I recalled a similar situation from a few years ago, when I had been given a case and decided to take a champagne bath. Today, just one bottle wasn’t quite enough for that; so I decided on a chapmpagne shower instead of a bath. I uncorked it, had a little sip and proceeded to the shower … Ah, what a pleasure!!! As I stepped out of the shower, still stark naked, I suddenly felt slightly tipsy – or so I thought – until I realized that the building was shaking and the window-filled walls moving. Yes, it was the 7.2 (richter scale) quake on Saturday morning that you have been reading about. The Japanese infrastructure for earthquakes is amazing, though. So it was a kind of scary fun to swing back and forth after the champagne shower on the 37^th floor of the Royal Park Shiodome hotel.

A once-in-a-lifetime experience, I hope.

On Beef and Passion

I am in Korea for the launch of the Korean edition of my book “Big Think Strategy,” giving speeches and doing press interviews, in the midst of the largest demonstrations the country has seen in many years. People are protesting the Korean government’s decision to lift the ban on U.S. beef imports which had been imposed in 2003 over fears of mad cow disease. The government is now being criticized for increasing health risks while appeasing the U.S. government. And since my book is full of beef and cow metaphors (“A great strategy is like a great steak,” “Kill the Sacred Cows,” etc), journalists ask me to comment on this hot political issue. “Korean people are passionate people,” I say hesitantly. “Just a few months ago, President Lee Myung-Bak was elected in a landslide, and now his approval ratings are about 20 per cent. It took President Bush seven years and a very unpopular war to get down to 30 per cent.” In fact, the demonstrations, which are heavily attended by teenagers and people in their twenties, are more like rave parties than the demonstrations I am used to from the seventies. Rather than being staged for a political agenda, these new demonstrations seem to be an expression of the boredom that sets in when people are fully satisfied and try to recapture, perhaps, a sense of lost passion.

Where in the world was SCHMITT?

NBC’s popular morning show “Today” currently runs a daily feature on its anchor, "Where in the World is Matt Lauer?" (On Monday he was in Buenos Aires; on Tuesday in the Netherlands, and today in Laos).  So, you may wonder, “Where in the World was SCHMITT?” (this spring that is).

Well, like Lauer, lots of places. In-between teaching at Columbia every week, I was in Germany, Korea, Mexico (twice), Greece, Turkey, and, oh yes, Atlanta and  Virginia-–for all sorts of things (speaking, consulting, researching). And there’s more coming: Brazil, Korea (again), Japan, Singapore, India, and South Africa. I am busier than ever,  especially internationally (I know you are, too). Must be the weak dollar. 

Which place so far was the most fun? (Turkey, without a doubt; I had not been to Istanbul in a while, and it is turning into a fabulous business and lifestyle place. Presumably, Newswek  called it the "coolest" city  recently.)

And the most interesting? (Greece, no doubt. After my consulting engagement in Athens was over, I went to the Acropolis for the very first time.)

And the most exciting? (Virginia. Had an audience of senior government execs, it was great to speak to them on "Big Think Strategy.")

Approaching eudaimonia ...

Corporate Eudaimonia: How can we prevent corporate scandals?

I met up with an old friend of mine, Robert Millard, who studied psychology with me in the doctoral program at Cornell. Back then, and still, I called him “Millard” and he called me “Schmitt.”  Now you know where the “Schmitt” thing started.

Millard brought this nicely bound book titled "Experiments in Ethics," by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Princeton University Professor and world authority on moral philosophy. The book is terrific; we debated it over scotch (Millard) and gin & tonic (me) till the wee hours. (If you care to find out my preferred brand of gin, read "Big Think  Strategy").

The problem with ethics discourse, according to Appiah, is roughly that it views ethics and morality as a series of decision situations of the "trolley dilemma type" (a run-away trolley hurtling down the tracks  is on course to kill five people on its way;  you can save the five or hit a switch that directs the trolley to a side track and only kill one) or the “Asian flu type” (choosing between two policy options in preparation for an outbreak of the Asian flu; if we do nothing 600 people will die; if we choose option A, 200 will be saved; if we choose option B, 400 will die).

While such exercises somewhat inform us about how people think and behave, these studies all have a major shortcoming: they are about moral emergencies that rarely occur in real life. That is, when was the last time you decided alone in seconds with a clear set of well-defined options about an issue of great moral significance -- such as life and death? Because they are bereft of life, these models are ill-fit as normative models of ethical decision-making and behavior.

Instead, according to Appiah, ethics is about a good life: eudaimonia, as Greek philosophers called it. Eudaimonia is often translated as “happiness” (that is, a feeling); but is more appropriately viewed as a "good, flourishing life." The bottom line: without some sense of ethics, a happy life may not be a good life.

Now, precisely structuring decision situations and laying out their parameters is a favorite exercise of decision theorists at business schools. It’s called the "management science"  approach. (The next day, in a talk by a business historian, I learned that this is the result of a re-education process sponsored by the Ford Foundation after World War II aimed to turn a prior generation of business school faculty into "management scientists.").

If Appiah is right, this approach to corporate ethics may be doomed to fail. Yet, the success of alternative approaches to moral re-education of our MBAs – such as scolding (“don’t cheat, don’t lie”) or using ex-cons to scare them straight - also remains to be seen.

So, what does Appiah recommend business educators do to prevent corporate scandals? I found the following quotes on a Princeton weekly bulletin page:

"I don’t think teaching morality or ethics in the classroom is going to stop people from doing bad things... And I don’t think that more moral philosophy in the business schools is going to help here...The role of those of us in the normative disciplines is not, in my judgment, to tell people what the right answers are to ethical  questions: it’s to provide them with the tools for thinking about them themselves."

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