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By Dan Nonte, University Relations
Lenovo CEO Bill Amelio speaks at the third annual UNCG Business Summit.
Contact: (336) 334-4314
Posted 11-19-08
GREENSBORO — Welcome to “Global 2.0,” Lenovo CEO Bill Amelio told the third annual UNCG Business Summit on Nov. 18.
Globalization once meant the West supplied innovation while developing countries provided cheap labor. Not anymore.
Global 2.0 means innovation can emerge anywhere in the world as hundreds of millions of people escape poverty.
By 2020, the middle class will increase sevenfold in China to 700 million people, and tenfold in India to 583 million, Amelio said to more than 130 attendees.
“In front of us the world is changing rapidly,” Amelio said. “It’s time to change the global map.”
In addition to reducing the suffering that accompanies poverty, the growth of the middle class promises benefits for businesses. One billion PCs were sold in the past quarter century. The next billion will be sold in six years, he predicted. That’s good news for Lenovo, one of the world’s largest PC manufacturers.
Amelio has served as the company’s president and CEO since 2005, the year it acquired IBM’s PC division.
Lenovo employs 25,500 people worldwide and has operations hubs in Raleigh, Beijing, Singapore and Paris. It opened its North American fulfillment center in eastern Guilford County earlier this year.
Terms like outsourcing and offshoring no longer make sense, he said, because there is no “out” or “of.” Stickers identifying where a product was “made” often just note its previous stop in a global supply chain.
Chancellor Linda P. Brady was also a keynote speaker. In speaking of the economy, she noted budget cuts, the credit crunch and the decrease in UNCG’s endowment over the past months.
Affordability and accessibility are two challenges. Others include changing demographics and the pressure to expand capacity in graduate education. On the latter point, she noted that in the last six years, UNCG has established more PhD programs than any other institution in the UNC system.
While many universities across the U.S. are just now reacting to these trying times, she told the business leaders at the summit, “We already have a game plan in North Carolina and at UNCG.” That is the UNC Tomorrow initiative, “our response to these difficult times.”
She listed things we will do. Faculty will engage in more interdisciplinary research, she said. UNCG we will find growth in strategic areas, continue to grow our relationship with N.C. A&T, emphasize the importance of technology transfer, and answer the demand for better teachers and more nurses.
“Both education and business sectors have a responsibility to the community in which we live to help make things better,” she said.