Drinkers the world round know the name Bacardi means rum, but few non-Cubans know that this global enterprise was founded — and is still owned — by a Cuban family that played an important role in the island’s social, political and economic history. Emilio Bacardi was a prominent activist in Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain, suffering lengthy periods of imprisonment for the cause. Other members of the clan, based in Cuba’s eastern city of Santiago, also stepped forward to oppose the sad parade of corrupt and dictatorial rulers that the island has since known. Longtime NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten writes in this absorbing familial and political history that the Bacardis are still remembered for “their class and their character. While they lived in elegant homes, rode in chauffeured carriages, and sent their children to exclusive private schools, they were also known as good Santiago citizens, generous and warmhearted and fair.”A Spanish immigrant by the name of Facundo Bacardi founded a mom-and-pop distillery in Santiago in 1862, when the island was the world’s richest colony, thanks to its vast sugarcane plantations and sugar mills. Bacardi realized that, unlike other sugar-producing islands, Cuba was not using the molasses byproduct to make and export rum. Pooling family funds to launch his business, Bacardi pioneered a new technique to produce a light, mixable rum that became a powerhouse in the worldwide spirits business.
ad_iconBacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba (being published next week) is at once a colorful family saga and a carefully researched corrective to caricatures of decadent pre-revolutionary Cuba and the 50-year disaster of Fidel Castro’s rule.
Globality – This book from three Boston Consulting Group (BCG) consultants suggests that the future of competition is far more complicated and unpredictable. Companies in the BRIC countries may certainly be emerging strong contenders to the hegemony of western multinationals, but they’re not the only ones. Whether it’s Mexico, Chile, Egypt, Hungary or Chile, potential world-beating corporations, their research shows that the spread of globalisation has meant that competition can emerge from pretty much anywhere. This is what the authors call “globality”.“Globality is not a new and different term for globalization,” the authors write, “it’s the name for a new and different global reality in which we’ll be competing with everyone, from everywhere, for everything.”
These “challenger” corporations, as the authors call them, are in a wide variety of industries, from the conventional (steel, textiles, mining, telecom, consumer electronics) to the less common (pianos, baby strollers, cosmetics, paper packaging).
This kind of congruence between labour cost and innovation provides a unique challenge to western corporations because, unlike the earlier contract manufacturing operations that made millionaires out of local entrepreneurs, these challenger companies are building their own intellectual capital (as opposed to simply pinching it).
India and Brazil, for instance, are patently emerging as strong bases for value engineering. US household goods major Whirlpool developed an affordable washing machine for developing markets from its units in Brazil. This was not a stripped-down version of a US product but a machine designed from scratch with a smaller payload capacity and other specs suited to the developing country consumer. In doing so, Whirlpool ended up creating a market for low-payload washing machines.
The authors also write about the Logan, jointly produced by French car-maker Renault and Mahindra & Mahindra. Though the product has not yet moved the market significantly, the authors describe how Renault by teaming up with M&M was able to develop the model at 15 per cent less than the project cost. Indeed, M&M has already established its reputation as a value engineer having achieved this feat earlier with the Scorpio.
