Influenced by the growing Spanish community, the importance of Spanish food in the cuisine of other Hispanic groups and more aggressive marketing by Spanish food manufacturers, more and more South Floridians are discovering the taste of Spain.

While some stores have long stocked a few Spanish products such as olive oil or the nougat candy turron, now an avalanche of products from la Madre Patria — as Hispanics call the Spanish motherland — are making their way to South Florida homes and there are even stores that carry Spanish foods exclusively.

Imports from Spain more than doubled from $332 million to $679 million at the Port of Miami-Dade from 2002 to 2003, according to the most recent figures available. Food and beverage imports accounted for more than 20 percent of the increase.

Food industry analysts say Spanish delicatessen foods and wines are now competing for the same shelves that French and Italian products have occupied for decades.

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Latin American countries have grappled for years with the need to provide basic services to the poor. Skewed income distribution leads to luxury apartments and flashy shopping districts a few miles from shanty towns and stolen car-parts markets. Corrupt and undependable police forces add little sense of security. Few of these problems will change in the coming year.

Politics throughout the region have shifted, however. Voters have chosen left-of-center governments in a half-dozen Latin American countries in recent years and may continue to do so. They want leaders who will pay attention to immediate social problems even if that means veering from privatization and globalization policies popular in the 1990s. Most voters feel such trickle-down policies have made little difference in their pocket books.

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Once again, job seekers can look forward to prosperity in the biggest U.S. industry – health care.

Advances in medical technology are propelling a longevity and wellness revolution. In turn, the hiring climate heralds a robust 2005 for those who can deliver much-needed services.

“Health care workers are in demand, and they know it,” said a Career Builder.com quarterly employment forecast. “More than 300,000 jobs have been created in health care in the last year, with more on the way.”

A 2004 nationwide survey shows a $24.16 average hourly wage – almost a 20 percent jump from $21.26 in 2001.

Statistics like these should encourage more minorities to go into nursing and other medical fields, according to a diversity study released in February by Washington’s Institute of Medicine. Latinos represent 12 percent of the U.S. population but only 2 percent of registered nurses.

Brian Smedley, the institute’s senior program officer and the study’s director, said more workers are needed who can cross cultural and linguistic barriers.

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Strategic Research Institute announces
the 11th Blockbuster Marketing to U.S. Hispanics and Latin America Conference
scheduled to take place in Miami Beach on January 24-27 at the Wyndham Miami
Beach Resort. The latest addition to the program is Brigadier General
(retired) Bernado Negrete from the United States Army. This comprehensive
agenda includes leading luminaries in the field of strategic planning,
research, advertising, PR, segmentation and target marketing, media planning
and buying, creative, direct marketing and grassroots outreach. This
successful series has a track record of being the premier conference in the
industry in terms of its content, networking opportunities and high-caliber of
attendees.

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These days, every employee here gets a birthday gift, something a multinational company might be expected to do in this age of feel-good corporate management.

The problem is that people in China do not traditionally celebrate birthdays.

But that is changing. And so is Lenovo. It is trying to become a global company with its purchase of I.B.M’s personal computer business for $1.75 billion, and handing out birthday cakes is just part of the process of evolving into a multinational corporation.

To further globalize the company, however, Lenovo will do something even bolder: it will move its headquarters to Armonk, N.Y., where I.B.M. is based, and essentially hand over management of what will become the world’s third-largest computer maker, after Dell and Hewlett-Packard, to a group of senior I.B.M. executives.

American multinational companies outsource manufacturing to China. Why can’t a Chinese company outsource management to the United States?

Preparations are already under way in Beijing. For the last few months, all vice presidents have been required to study English for at least one hour a day. The chairman says he has read books about Bill Gates and Andrew Grove. And the chief executive of Lenovo has agreed to give up day-to-day management of the company to assume the role of chairman.

Lenovo’s challenge will be to meld radically different corporate cultures.

“Neither culture should be the de facto culture,” said Martin Gilliland, an analyst at Gartner Research. “They have to start a new one. Can they develop a new Lenovo business culture? That’s one of the keys to success.”

And the new language for the company is English, company officials say.

Lenovo officials say they are studying American business history, and the chief executive lists The Harvard Business Review as part of his regular reading.

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Hat tip: Going Global

In many parts of Latin America, resistance to cultural domination by the United States is often synonymous with a reluctance to learn or speak English. But here, where Salvador Allende was once a beacon for the left, the current Socialist-led national government has begun a sweeping effort to make this country bilingual.

Chile already has the most open, market-friendly economy in Latin America, and the language plan is seen as advancing that process.

The initial phase of the 18-month-old program, officially known as “English Opens Doors,” calls for all Chilean elementary and high school students to be able to pass a standardized listening and reading test a decade from now. But the more ambitious long-term goal is to make all 15 million of Chile’s people fluent in English within a generation.

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Hat tip: Going Global

Trying to do international business without prior cross-cultural training is a recipe for disaster. But there is more to such training than learning how to order a five-course meal, says Sudipta Dev

When organisations become cross-border entities, cross-cultural factors start affecting every aspect of the business. Whether in multi-cultural teams or in business interactions, the variants of cultural nuances eventually end up affecting the business. Cross-cultural training is conducted by many Indian IT organisations to equip their employees with skills to do business in a global environment. But there is much more to cross-cultural training than a crash course in etiquette or learning how to order a five-course meal; it is about a deeper understanding of the values and ethos that define a culture. However, this starts by understanding one’s own culture and then graduating to understanding and appreciating the differences of another.

Misinterpretations and misconceptions are common when the same situation is viewed differently by people from different cultures. The basis of inter-cultural relations are not about changing other people, but adapting oneself to another culture. In India, while earlier the focus was on training professionals working with software companies on international assignments, today it is an integral part of BPO culture for those personnel who have to interact with overseas clients.

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Arabic, now designated a “strategic” language by the U.S. government, faces unprecedented demand for instruction in schools across America, from kindergarten upwards. Not long ago, Middle Eastern languages comprised only 2 percent of all foreign language classes in the United States, led by Hebrew. Then, a Modern Language Association survey revealed a 92 percent rise in Arabic enrollments between 1998 and 2002 — to 10,600.

While there’s buzz about the high demand for Arabic linguists, the real story lies beyond the headlines. Besides the dramatic rise in Arabic enrollments, government and education leaders are intensely collaborating to foster earlier and sustained study, to build Arabic language capacity and cross-cultural understanding in the United States.

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Christmas is definitely in the air around the globe. And the Christmas buzz has been increasingly welcomed by Chinese people, as internationalization continues to transform the landscape.

Indulging in mouth-watering delights while being swept away by an array of cultural holiday entertainment has become a bit of a rage in big cities such as Beijing now. For many Chinese, the novel idea of “Christmas” has arrived, becoming another welcome and pleasant way to celebrate the country’s “opening up” and development.

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While relief workers rushing to Asia to help deal with the aftermath of the tsunamis will have little time to interact with locals, aid workers who spend more time abroad require special intercultural skills.

…future development workers are taught to change their perspective, to see their own behavior from the perspective of the culture they’ll be working in.

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The Chinese-language Web site of fast food giant McDonald’s Corp. was broken into twice on Christmas by a hacker protesting against its listing of Taiwan as a separate country, the Beijing Youth Daily said Monday.

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Hat tip: Going Global

In a land of magic and mystics, beyond the waves of the Arabian Sea, lives a hero whose soul will forever remain American. But in body and form he now belongs to India, where his story unravels in the tale of a wall-crawling do-gooder.

Spider-Man, they call him. But the next time he unmasks, an Indian boy named Pavitr Prabhakar will be revealed.

Peter Parker may be America’s Spider-Man, swinging among the skyscrapers and contemplating his urban angst. But in India, he’s Pavitr, with his own comic book for young Indians eager to embrace their own superhero.

Readers will find Spider-Man living in Bombay, a seaside city flush with gangsters, movie stars and some of the world’s largest slums. It’s a city with a generous supply of good and evil, fragrant with riches and smelling of poverty, where small-town Indians go to make it big and ill-meaning men lurk in every corner.

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For Sanjay Saxena, it was his first assignment abroad when the multi-national firm that he worked for sent him to Europe. Given a tight deadline to complete his first project, he briskly called for a day-long team meeting on Saturday, to kick off the project.

Half an hour after he had sent out the communication, he got a call from his Western boss. Five minutes later, a chastened Saxena was back in his workplace recalling his email, after being soundly rebuked for being insensitive to other people.

It took a while for Saxena to internalise that working on Saturday (an off day), which was a sign of commitment to the job in India , was perceived as intruding into others’ personal space in the European office of the same company.

As India integrates into a more seamless world, the ability to work in a cross-cultural environment is a valuable asset for any ambitious executive.

Managing to understand, appreciate and perhaps even exploit the nuances of these cultural differences, could spell all the difference between success and failure in some business situations.

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Christmas isn’t just a festival, it’s a cross-cultural global celebration. Variants there may be, but certain customs are common…

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Managers at Cary Towne Center say a growing number of shoppers speak Spanish so it’s critical Santa can connect with all the children.

“It makes a big difference to see a child wandering…standing there, wishing to be close to Santa and before you know it he’s sitting on Santa’s lap and Santa is speaking Spanish to him,” Santa added. “That’s his language [and] he does not question it.”

Whether it’s in English, Spanish or French, Santa listens carefully to each request. While Barbie and Spiderman top the list of most young children, Santa says most of the older children ask for something bigger.

“This year, more than any other year, I’ve got more requests for peace on earth,” he said.

It’s a gift all of us could ask for this Christmas, no matter what language you speak.

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Note: In the words of former South African president Nelson Mandela, “If you talk to someone in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”