How to Gain Ground
- Published: January 31, 2005, By Yolanda Simonsis, Associate Publisher/Editor
Editorial
Last December I wrote an editorial about "Finding Our Footing" and asked readers to share their personal experiences regarding jobs lost to China. It was my second request for this information, leading me to suspect that maybe I was imagining a problem that didn’t exist. Then, one brave soul, followed by a second, stepped forward to tell their stories.
After recounting the experience of a Wisconsin magazine and book printer who lost reprint business to China, the first reader wrote:
Another reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, raises a bigger question about losing more than jobs to China. The reader refers to a Web site anyone may readily access hosted by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (mhi.co.jp/sanki/film/en/results/index.htm) that provides a public list of newly built film lines:
If the pictures these readers paint are accurate, the future appears less than rosy. Many of you must feel challenged by these accounts, but I refuse to believe there’s nothing you can do. Business, like politics, is similar to a game. This isn’t meant in any trivial sense of the word because people’s livelihoods, with maybe a few optional comforts, are at stake. Still, businesses compete much the same way as board games are won or lost. The ones who repeatedly win know the rules backward and forward. They’re simply better players who have trained themselves to understand and use the rules to their best advantage.
So here’s some advice: Learn and understand the machinations at work in this evolving global business world that make it spin either in or out of your control. Come this April 18 to CMM at Chicago’s McCormick Place. A conference session I’m moderating from 8:30 a.m. to noon, titled "Navigating the Challenges of a Global Marketplace," will address Trends in the Packaging Industry with insight from Colin McLelland, VP of Ernst & Young Corporate Finance; International Trade Issues presented by the US Dept. of Commerce; Competing In/Against a Global Market with Paul Frost of PJ Assoc.; Supply Chain Management/ERP Solutions + Recognizing Additional Revenue Opportunties with Packaging Personified; and CE Marking with Robert Morgan, director of Technology Intl.
Learn how to start gaining ground!
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