Module 4

In recent years the proliferation of renewable energy has been in the minds of the general public.  The main reason for this is the high cost of combustible fuels that we use on a daily basis.  This problem of high energy costs has been a motivating force that Mr. Darin Long has struggled with.  Mr. Darin Long is the CEO of Millennial Research Corporation a new technology research / renewable energy company. Mr., Long who holds a Thunderbird International MBA, possesses a strong marketing, SCM, cross cultural negotiation skills and emphasis on supply-chain management.  He has identified that conventional internal combustion engine and electric motor technologies are inefficient and based on century‐old technology. 

Mr. Darin Long has over 20 years of international and domestic experience in a wide range of executive and managerial roles within several domestic and international businesses. Mr. Long has consulted in computer networking and supply-chain management and has led the development and launched dozens of product lines that have achieved global sales. Mr. Long has started and run a multi-million dollar company.  He has lead OEM "original equipment manufacturer" products from R&D to commercialization ranging from power-sports and sporting goods to house wares, one of which earned a Field and Stream Best of the Best Award in 2007. These products were sold globally through big box stores e.g., Costco, Wal-Mart etc. plus smaller regional retailers throughout the United States. 

Mr. Long discovered that his supply-chain management skills were the discovery that the power-sports industry was highly inefficient in the sources of energy used and there was a better way to run a combustible engine.  He and his friend/partner who was a Mechanical Engineer have developed a more efficient way of running a conventional engine by developing a new motor that is called a “Magnetronic motor.”  Conventional motors and generators use iron to transmit the alternating magnetic fields that cause the motor to rotate. Iron‐based motors get hot (heat = waste). Magnetronic motors do not use iron but rather magnets therefore do not get hot (cool = efficient). 

Mr. Long mentions that the most important advantages of Magnetronic products is the reduced cost. Magnetronic products are less expensive per horsepower than competing motor technologies. This advantage is substantial in medium-sized motors; however, this advantage multiplies significantly in larger motors or generators, whether for industrial equipment, large vehicles (large trucks or buses, for example), or power generation applications.

Efficiency Advantage;

Electric vehicle owners want more miles per battery charge. Millennial motor designers have achieved high efficiency over a far broader range of RPM and performance conditions than conventional motors. Conventional motors have narrow range good efficiency and poor efficiency outside of optimal operating conditions. Magnetronic Motors have very broad range of power while maintaining high efficiency.

Comparison Factors;

There are hundreds of types of electric motors for various sizes and functions currently on the market. According to research, Magnetronic Motors outperform them all!

For example, AC induction motors are inexpensive and efficient, but lack good power to weight ratios and have limited RPM ranges. DC motors are more expensive and have a wider operating RPM range, but have limited efficiency. Electric motors are considered to have longer lives when compared with gas, diesel and steam engines, but in conventional motors, a single broken wire can require weeks or months to repair/replace.

This is the future of more energy efficient uses and I believe that we see these new technology/motors in the near future.  This is very exciting to see real innovation in motion.

Module 3

The two terms are often interchangeable.  However, the concepts of offshoring and outsourcing are extremely different for the mere reason of just distance. Offshoring is moving your business and its processes into a new country.  In other words, offshoring is moving your whole LA office to the Philippines for the cheap overhead and most likely the labor as well.  The outsourcing process is keeping the LA office and staff in the US and using products and/or services in Philippines for the cheap labor and products.

I believe that Wal-Mart Empire has become of much like the Dictator’s and Emperor’s we have seen in the past.  However, Wal-Mart is a corporation and of course not a country but much its leadership and the way it conducts business is very much like a country ruled a by ruthless leader’s.  They have the coined the term “everyday low prices” but what are the unseen costs to achieve this day in and day out? Well it’s simple - squeezing the heck out of your suppliers and employees like Stalin did in his day but now you have this business concept draped over with the flag of capitalism.  Don’t get me wrong I love the process of competition but you have storm troopers in Bentonville, AR, headquarters of Wal-Mart, controlling suppliers’ way of doing business.  Nevertheless, if a supplier wants to have the pleasure of having their products shine in Wal-Mart stores worldwide they have to cut their profit margins to fit within the Wal-Mart’s supply chain business model.  Wal-Mart not only wants to flatten the world they want to put a crater into it.

I purchased shoes laces several months ago - no big deal right.  My good friend was along for the ride.  He, a loyal Wal-Mart disciple – Informed me that Wal-Mart would be my best bet and he was right on the price.  The shoe laces were only .99 cents, a bargain for any savvy shopper.  Only week later the shoe lace broke and again I went back to Wal-Mart purchase another.  Well the same result a week later.  I finally ended up in Target and paid 2.50 for a pair of shoe laces and to this day I have the same laces.  Somewhere in the supply chain Wal-Mart found the cheapest way of mass producing shoe laces from suppliers in other countries…just for me come back again and again.  By the way I ended up spending more each trip to Wal-Mart a little milk here soda there and so on.  They know what they’re doing and now I know what they’re doing.

The world is never going to be the same ever…the mighty Google is everywhere and I mean everywhere.  Google is global and knows you better than you probably know yourself.  Just type your name in Google I bet you will be surprised at what you find.  I don’t think that any business can hide from this Mammoth of a company.  I use Google on a daily basis for my online business and other research I do as well.  However, one might have to be very careful of the content on Google or other search engines. I still believe there is a fundamental flaw in trusting too much information that search engine provides all of us.  The information via the internet might be very wrong or incorrect so searchers beware.

Module 2

I thought initially that this new internet platform that we all currently enjoy will continue to evolve and feed our unquenchable thirst for more content, more technology.  For the most part I believe we have marveled for the last two decades at our accomplishments in the world - Everyone on the same platform to conduct a new way of business relationships.  This new way of business is amazing and has made our daily lives better to communicate and work more efficiently on this new global environment.  Nevertheless, I pose a simple question, are we too eager to embrace this new internet revolution?  Or should we ask ourselves to slow down and look at what we are doing to ourselves in this new environment?  My understanding of workload software is the processes of efficiencies when operating in this digital world.  However, I’m going to attempt to explain this process/concept in how our bodies incorporate this same system efficiency or the lack thereof.

A few years ago I took my son on a road trip.  It was my first time traveling alone with my son.  I was really excited because my wife couldn’t make the trip and this was a “guy’s only trip” (no one to tell us what to do or eat).  At the time my son was only five years old and I told him on every stop we made on our 7 hour trip “to get anything you want” of course, he was very excited and picked everything he wanted, candy of every kind and drinks of any favor.  It turned to be a very fun the first two thirds of our trip.  Oh I forgot to tell you, we were traveling in the winter time that- will make more sense later.  On our last two hours of the trip my son became uneasy from the massive feast of indulgence and turned to me.  His face covered in chocolate.  I looked over and said “oh no are you okay? Do you want me to stop – do you feel like throwing up?” Before I could say anything…my son preceded to unleash an ungodly amount of previously eaten snacks all over in the front seat of my car!  The point I would like to express is that workload processes works only efficiently on what it is fed but the outcome might be very different than what we intended like my son indulging too much on the wrong input and not realizing the outcome, no pun intended.

I recently started an internet business.  I found that I could start my business with a minimal amount of funds.  Years ago I attempted to start my business via the internet but the cost to start my new business was in the thousands of dollars.  Unfortunately, I decided that I didn’t want to attempt this. Today, I started my internet business for just a few hundred dollars thanks to open source software like WordPress. 

I understand the concept of outsourcing is utilizing the talents and resources from all parts of the world.  However, I believe that Mr. Freedman fails to comment on the down side on and how this concept can turn horribly wrong.   I was in financial services for the better part of life.  I started in the banking business in the early 1990’s.  The mortgage business only had two main players in the mortgage business FANNE MAE and FREDDIE MAC also known as Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation.  A few years later private banks got into the game of purchasing mortgages.  In early 2000 as Mr. Friedman notes the new converges and one of the flatteners was the new way of doing business which resulted, in my opinion, the start of the housing disaster.  I credit our political geniuses in our government that decided to deregulate mortgage derivatives as a result Wall Street decided to get more involved in the mortgage business by selling mortgage securities globally.  I believe that outsourcing gives only a small piece of the pie of accountability to a very few.  I believe the danger behind that concept of outsourcing is who will take ownership of the whole pie when all the pieces of the pie are reassembled?  Back to my trip with my son without my wife – it seemed like everyone in America was taking out home loans and obtaining credit because it was so easy to obtain.  Back in 2005 at the peak of our excess almost anyone who had a heartbeat could get a loan no matter what your obligation was and the bank didn’t really care if you paid your loan back or not.  The economy was growing at a record pace there seemed like there was no end to the party.  Everyone was making money buying and selling real estate.  However, in late 2007 the mortgage business – like my son- got extremely sick and barfed.  I still believe that technology is awesome but I think that we need to stop and observe what it is doing in our daily lives.

Module 01

Mr. Thomas Friedman is an absolutely an innovator of recognizing the global opportunities of business.  It is very interesting to see the view of globalization of being flat and not round as most of us see it today.  Globalization 1.0 was the early days of global discovery that started in 1492 with Columbus. The next Globalization 2.0 started in 1800 narrowing the gaps of communication and business commerce this was beginning of real international commerce. However, today Globalization 3.0 is the leveling the global economic playing field.  This is the world that we live now – where anybody anywhere can compete on a global scale. I believe that other countries are taking advantage of our lack of ability to identify this new globalization is quite disheartening to say the least.  This new concept of work flow revolution is amazing to witness on a daily basis around the world.  This new platform of uploading content from my home and being able to communicate and create commerce globally is very exciting.  The convergence of all of this new technology into a single but very large horizontal platform that brings value to almost everyone that does any communication via the World Wide Web is very unprecedented.

In November 9^th 1989 - was I living in Europe at the time when the Berlin Wall fell. The atmosphere in Switzerland was sensational people were so excited to see that communist rule was ending.  I was very fortunate to witness this event first hand.  Of course, I had really no idea at the time what it really meant for me personally.  Looking back now - I believe I wasn’t alone.  However, there were mega opportunists that capitalized greatly as a result of the fall of the Berlin wall.   

I remember when I use to get free Aol and Netscape CD disks in the mail urging…no begging me to get connected to the internet. These were very interesting times in the early years of the internet. Netscape was the catalyst of the dot com boom in the 1995 went the company went public.  Today, I find it very fascinating to see my two teenage boys growing up in this world not knowing anything but the internet.  This is for me interesting to view from my vantage point of them interacting with folk globally without any borders.  They have friends worldwide that they speak with frequently and for them this is normal and at times that are able sell products from here in Ogden, UT.  They send packages to their customers off sometimes daily but mostly weekly around world.  I love the comment of “content is being developed by you or to you.”  That is very inspiring to me to be more innovative in finding my place in the global economy. 

            Mr. Friedman is very insightful in providing a roadmap for the rest of us to see the possibilities to be a part of this new revolution.