Brave New Megacommunities World

Globalization, internationalisation, call it what you will, but, like it or not, it’s here, and here to stay.  Megacommunities is a best selling book which acknowledges this fact and expounds a new management theory which implores the world’s organisations, business, political and non-profit, to work to together to confront and overcome global issues.

I was lucky enough to have been present at launch of the Megacommunities book in Italy.

Megacommunities surmise is startlingly straightforward:  global issues require global solutions.  Moreover, in today’s ever more connected world, the means to implement projects at a global level already exist.  Examples of such projects, some of which are in Italy, are given in the book.

Megacommunities cites global problems such as AIDS and climate change.  Issues which affect us all, no matter where we live.  The current global economic crisis is a further example of a global level issue.  Indeed, what could be described as a veiled benefit of this crisis is that it has made us aware of the fragility of our interconnected world.  In the past, crises hit individual countries, or companies.  Rarely did such events touch in their entirety the citizens of the world.

Today though, the world moves as though it were one gargantuan wheel.  A wheel so interconnected that if one of its spokes fails, the breakage can be catastrophic for the rest of the structure, creating effects which reverberate negatively from the hub all the way to the rim.

In order to ensure that one or two malfunctioning spokes do not destroy the rest of the wheel that is today’s world, Megacommunities stresses that the world’s leaders need, no, must work together as one global team, pooling their resources to come up with workable solutions to ensure the human race continues to thrive and move forward.

The megacommunities idea is both brave and innovative.  But what’s all this got to do with Italy?  Aside from the obvious, in that Italy is situated on this globe.  Let me begin to answer with this with a further question:  Ever heard of Booz & Company?  Or of Fernando Napolitano?

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Murdoch’s Sky Italy versus The Berlusconi’s Mediaset

Once upon a time Murdoch and Berlusconi were ‘business buddies’, to quote the words used in an article which appeared in Time magazine back in February this year.

Well, it so happens that I’ve just finished running a course on press release writing skills and understanding the foreign media for the media relations master students at the business school at which I often find myself.  Dennis Redmont, professor of international communication at the University of Perugia, was also present, and used his many years of experience in the media industry to tell the students all about the differences between Italian and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ media.

Professor Redmont, who acts as a media consultant and media trainer in Italy, contributed to the Time article which examined the battle of the airwaves simmering away between the Italian media mogul stroke current prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and global media baron, Rupert Murdoch.  Today, Dennis Redmont observed, as indeed he had done in the Time article, that the market share of Murdoch’s Sky Italy, despite Berlusconi’s supposed dominance of the television industry in Italy, is growing.

This growth must be much to the chagrin of one Silvio Berlusconi, who must have thought that he had the Italian market pretty well sown up.  The question is:  Why is Sky Italy gaining substantial ground, and, presumably, stealing advertising revenue from the all conquering Mediaset operation controlled by Berlusconi and family?  A good question, is it not?

Well, here’s an attempt at an answer. Read more