Marketing
Issue No. 3 - December/ 2001/january
A Global Game
by Dr David Corkindale
David Corkindale says that our Sporting prowess can teach us how to handle Globalisation.
Australian swimmers at the World Championship in July demonstrated that we can be the best in the World. Lleyton Hewitt from Adelaide won the US Open Tennis Championship in September and attained the world No 1 in November. In cricket, rugby and many other sports Australia is a world—beater, yet many factors would seem to be against us being anywhere near so successful. We have a small population to draw upon and are in a region that does not offer strong, local competition and our seasons are out of phase with most of the rest of the sporting world. Sport has become globalised but this has not put Australia at a disadvantage it seems.
Some people in the community say there is too much emphasis on sport and that this distracts us from serious matters. Not a bit of it — the sports people and their organisers and managers are very good at what they do and the rest of us can learn some important lessons from them to help us handle the globalising world.
Many industries and the very fabric of society is said to be under threat from globalisation. Protesters at the G8 meeting in Genoa, and the World Economic Forum before it in Melbourne, warn of dire consequences from globalisation — warnings that worry many in Australia and fuel the support for movements like One Nation. There seems no answer to the inevitable loss of corporate headquarters, or the shift of factory jobs to the third world. People have seen work and professional people drift from country towns to the capital cities, to Sydney and then off—shore.
How can the lessons from sporting success best be applied? For instance, we seem to need to learn how to be successful at commercialising science and technology in particular, as well as business in general. Most other countries recognise that Australia has world—class science, but many of us feel there is not mu...
