Commentary

BRIC or IC?

Having now worked in two of the BRIC countries; Brazil and China, I am not sure BRIC is the correct acronym.  From my point of view, China and Brazil have little in common – other than both being lower income countries.

Before I go into details, I should explain that I am working on a government project in Brazil and may therefore have a different perspective than someone in the private sector.  However, while work ethics may differ, the economics are the same.  Here is what I mean.  In China if someone works harder today in order to make a little more money tomorrow, goods and services are cheap enough that the little increase in income can make a measurable difference in buying power and standard of living, thus fueling the drive to get more….  But in Brazil, if one does the same thing (works harder today to get a little more money tomorrow), the same payoff is not there – goods and services are costly enough that the incremental change is insignificant.  There is no “flywheel” effect in Brazil, leading me to believe it will be a very long time before Brazil can really compete with the likes of China and India.

Taking the above into account, and adding what little I know about Russia (I had several Russian classmates from my International MBA in Beijing), I would argue that BRIC should be more appropriately coined IC – but I guess that doesn’t sound nearly as nice…..

Doing Business in China

Check out my recent interview with IT Decisions (News, Analysis And Comment On Brazil IT; itdecs.com). This started as a discussion on LinkedIn regarding IP protection in China, and after some communications with Mark, he asked if I was interested in contributing to his site.

http://itdecs.com/2011/07/success-in-china-needs-respect-patience-respect/