Summary of the Guest Lecture By Mr Somjit Amrit (Chief Strategy Officer, Icomm Technologies-formula HR at Bengaluru, Karnataka, India & the CEO, ESSAY Associates) On 16th October 2020 during 4 pm – 5:30 pm
The Guest Lecture titled “Techno-Nationalism and its impact on International Business” presented by Mr. Somjit Amrit highlighted the changes in international business in 2020. Focal points were discussed on the parlance of PEST framework that is widely used to gauge the environmental dynamics. The discussion started with the major events that occurred in current year: Brexit, ongoing trade war, China’s expansionism and climate changes. There is a shift in the market share of Global GDP as China’s dominance is increasing and world leadership is supposed to undergo a major change. China achieves 16% of global GDP as in 2020. Another orientation of the discussion was to deliberate over the ongoing nationalist and protectionist policies; deglobalization patterns by many countries in recent past. But technology is new form of globalization as per the speaker (Mr. Amrit). There was a interplay demonstrated between political ideologies and techno-diplomacy. According to him digital economy will prosper in years to come as anticipated by the speaker. Old multilateral institutions are becoming weak and there is a leadership change as well. China is about to set new global standard but the acceptability is a matter of concern. Next to this, supply chain disruptions and loss of economic disruption due to heavy dependence upon China is an alarming situation for all nations. Hence, need to work upon supply chain resilience. Following five technologies are supposed to shape the international business as per the outcome of the lecture: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Semiconductors, Quantum Computing, Robotics and Energy Storage. USA are in neck to neck competition as far as the technological leadership is concerned. The session ended up with the outcome: Techno- Nationalism will lead to realignment of global supply chain and who ever leads in the technology race and owns the data would dominate the de-globalized world.
