The Thursday evening keynote at Mplanet was delivered by IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano. But before his keynote address, Sam was presented with the Sheth Medal. The award's namesake Dr. Jag Sheth took the stage to discuss the purpose of the award. The Sheth Medal is for leaders that take an active role in creating a customer-focused organization. Dr. Sheth said the award is anchored to the AMA because of their focus on customers.

After the medal presentation, Sam spoke about some of the changes taking place in business and marketing from a global view. In the past few days Sam has been on a trip around the world, literally. First stop was Portugal to meet with the president of that country who is also the EU president. Next stop was China. China is obviously a fast-growing market. IBM's operations in China increased 27% this past quarter alone.

If it's not China it's India. IBM is the largest global employer in India. They plan to triple their investment in that country over the next few years. China and India are the epicenter of a global demographic shift.

When Sam joined IBM they were a true global company, they had separate units in just about every major country. However they also duplicated many efforts across these divisions. Each unit had it's own marketing, back office, HR, IT, sales components. Things are changing though. What used to be considered efficient is now looked at as redundant. Globalization is forcing consolidation of these redundant tasks.

When everything is connected, work moves. However, why can't a brilliant marketing mind help anybody else in the company around the globe?

One of the reasons that many jobs have moved overseas has been cost. But cost is not always the deciding factor, if it was then there would be a one-way flow of jobs. Skills are just as imporant. Why are many European biotech firms opening R&D centers in the US? It's not cost, it's a skilled workforce.

Globalization is about tapping into the creative talents from across the globe, as said before, cost is not always the major factor.

By 2010 the world is on track to produce 10 billion processors for every person on earth. Imagine if we focussed those resources on tapping into and harnessing the collective wisdom of all those people?

Our children are playing with super computers. Their game consoles contain an amazing amount of processing power. Put 10,000 of them together, like IBM does, and you have the world's most powerful supercomputer.

Recently Sam visited their R&D center and saw some of the new technologies that IBM's teams are working on. Coming out of that session he wanted to share these ideas and concepts with IBM's customers and partners. What could IBM and their customers/partners gain by collaborating? Collaboration is more than just having a beer with a colleague. It takes a concerted effort to have true collaboration.

Sam closed with one last question to the audience In this world of globalization, what will you do? Will you step up the the challenge? From a marketing standpoint, it's not just about taking an ad and putting into a number of languages, it's about becoming part of the culture.