Fusion Entrepreneurs

Cross-Cultural Execs & Companies

Revolutionizing the Global Economy

Edward Iwata

Fusion Entrepreneurs

by Edward Iwata

Copyright © 2012 Edward Iwata

All rights reserved

Cover illustration: Edel Rodriguez

E-book formatting: Maureen Cutajar, Go Published

This book is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are

not rendering legal, financial, or other professional advice. The author and

publisher have made best efforts to ensure the accuracy and completeness

of the contents and information within.

Fusion Entrepreneurs

Cross-Cultural Execs & Companies

Revolutionizing the Global Economy

THE 21ST CENTURY global economy and cultural diversity are converging more rapidly and

on a grander scale than ever before. Who does it affect? All 7 billion of us and counting. In

quick-hitting journalistic style, Fusion Entrepreneurs explores the many mega-forces that are

dramatically changing the business world. Powerful multinationals. The migrant workforce.

Global pop culture. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Diversity practices. Legal and regulatory

trends. Technology and finance. At the heart of this epic transformation are fusion entrepreneurs

and executives, a rising breed of business leader that is revolutionizing the U.S. and world

economies. They hail from many hues and backgrounds: David Neeleman, founder of Brazilian

airline Azul and a devout Mormon from the United States. Ralph de la Vega, a Cuban immigrant

from Miami who rose to become CEO of AT&T Mobility. Claudia Fan Munce, head of IBM’s

venture capital arm and one of technology’s most successful female executives. Carlos Ghosn,

global CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance and master of the cross-cultural business alliance.

Their common bonds? They’re visionary and diverse business people, meeting at the borderlands

of commerce and culture. And their ascent comes at the cusp of a new economic age, perhaps the

most extraordinary era yet.

EDWARD IWATA is an American journalist and writer based in Silicon Valley, California,

U.S.A. His literary journalism, investigative business and political profiles, breaking news

coverage, and college journalism have won numerous national and regional awards. He has been

a business and general-assignment reporter at USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle-

Examiner, and the Orange County Register, and a contributor to the Los Angeles Times and other

publications. Ed has covered topics as diverse as globalization trends, the Asian economy,

management and workplace issues, corporate and political scandals, legal and regulatory issues,

banking and finance, spirituality in the workplace, the business of sports, natural disasters,

literary writers and filmmakers, hunting and fishing, and college and high-school sports. His

writings have been published and cited in anthologies, textbooks, academic studies, law journals,

and congressional testimony. Ed blogs and can be contacted at CoolGlobalBiz.com.

E-book cover art by EDEL RODRIGUEZ, a Cuban American artist whose work can be seen in

the Smithsonian, private galleries and the New Yorker, Time, Fortune and the New York Times.

Contents

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE BOOK AND AUTHOR

PREFACE

PART ONE: GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FUSION ENTREPRENEURS

1. Parachuting into the New Economic Age

2. Global Cadre of Entrepreneurs and Executives

3. The 21st Century Immigrants: “A Human Face to Globalization”

4. Epic Global Power Shift

5. Rapid Rise of Cross-Border Companies

6. Emerging Consumers in the Global Bazaar

7. Global Pop Culture and Arbiters of Cool

8. Twin Juggernauts of Technology and Finance

9. Cross-Border Innovation and Planet Entrepreneur

10. Global Workplace Diversity and Cultural Fusion

11. A Better Corporate World: Environmental, Social, and Governance Practices

12. Long Tale of Globalization: More Walls to Fall?

PART TWO: PROFILES AND INTERVIEWS

13. Tech Giant Intel: Vanguard of a New World

14. Mormon CEO and Azul Founder David Neeleman Storms Brazil

15. Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn: Cross-Cultural Global Partnerships

16. Tata Group, Masters of the Global Merger

17. AT&T Mobility CEO and Latino Visionary Ralph de la Vega

18. Tech Sage Leonard Liu and Augmentum

19. MC Hammer: Street Cred in Techland

20. Pi Brothers: Sports Entrepreneurs Bring Mixed Martial Arts to China

21. Hybrid Exec: IBM Venture Capital’s Claudia Fan Munce

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

REFERENCES

END NOTES

Preface

“What is to be done about the world economy? Is contemporary globalization

inevitable? Is it desirable? Will it last forever?”

– Jeffry A. Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall

and Rise in the Twentieth Century

(New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).

IT HAS BEEN a mega-story in the making for decades. After global warming and international

security, the 21st century convergence and fusion of global business and cultural diversity may

be the most urgent tale of our era. And the vast topic keeps rising in importance as the world’s

economy keeps growing.

What is newsworthy about it? Nearly everything, as borders keep eroding to trade, finance,

and cultural trends. Who does it affect? All 7 billion of us and counting. But globalization is

“devilishly complicated,”[1] and it does not fit neatly into the 24-hour news cycle. Most media

stories end at the end of the day. Not this one. We’ve barely skimmed the surface.

To their credit, a small army of writers and researchers has been exploring the contemporary

convergence, building steadily on the body of literature.

A generation or two ago, futurists and scholars – John Naisbitt (Megatrends), Alvin Toffler

(Third Wave), Willis Harman (Global Mind Change), Peter Schwartz (The Art of the Long View),

Theodore Levitt (“The Globalization of Markets”)[2] and others – spotted many of the emerging

modern-day waves of this great transformation.[3] Many respected academics have been digging

up strong cross-border connections in business, economics, history, the social sciences. Business

analysts, consultants, and executives also have been sharing their insights and experiences from

the frontlines of cross-cultural commerce.

And now, more journalists are shaping the global business narrative.[4] We’re integrating

ideas, complementing others, spinning forward the latest research. We’re also doing what we do

best: bringing faces to the trends and issues.

Fusion Entrepreneurs is a natural evolution of my life’s work as a reporter in the trenches,

interviewing everyone from Fortune 500 CEOs to Black Muslim leaders. The wide-ranging

themes in this e-book come from my business and cultural writing and research over three

decades. Nothing struck me in a blinding flash, while praying in temples or strolling on the

beach. I don’t scale mountains in Asia, jet to Davos for soirees, speak a dozen foreign tongues.

My only visa is the credit card in my skinny-ass wallet. I’m a middle-class, white-collar,

red-blooded American from a low-income, blue-collar background. As a journalist, I’ve written

about everything from house-hunting to alligator-hunting. A political moderate, I think our laws

should protect gun owners and gay homeowners alike. And frankly, I’d rather watch a ballgame

or go fishing than read 200-page reports on the global economy and how American power is

flagging.

So why do I follow global news and click through those long reports? Because our economic

future depends upon it. Because it’s critical that we understand the rest of the world a little more.

Because our knowledge of the business and cultural forces shaping the planet will determine our

evolving role in the world.

As a native son of the global mega-city of Los Angeles, I’ve long been fascinated by the raw

fusion of forces in the business and cultural crucible of California, where world trends are born

years, decades even, before hitting mainstream society. One example: those funky street moves

that you see in fitness videos, Bollywood musicals, and television dance shows? Much of the

creative inspiration came from youths poppin’ and lockin’ on the streets and schoolyards of

urban L.A. as far back as the 1970s.

Luckily, early in my career I was among a small cadre of journalists in the big corporate

media who wrote about cross-cultural topics – including “ethnic” entrepreneurs and small

businesses – that cried out for wider coverage.

One of my first stories fresh out of college was a freelance feature for the Los Angeles Times

on the city’s three large minority-owned newspapers: the Rafu Shimpo, the Sentinel, and La

Opinion. For this L.A. boy with roots in the city’s urban neighborhoods, it seemed to be a natural

news topic, a matter of connecting the dots, of finding the common business and cultural themes.

Surprisingly, no one in the mainstream media had done it at the time.

Or look at the many Asian-influenced practices – the martial arts, acupuncture, Asian

cooking, Buddhism – that took root in California generations ago. For instance, long before the

management phrase “thought leadership” even appeared, global minds from many disciplines

gathered a half-a-century ago at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur on the Northern California

coast.[5] Imagine mind-blowing workshops with spiritual gurus, Nobel scientists, leading-edge

psychologists.

Such “New Age” and “touchy-feely” people and practices were mocked for many years. But

now, they’re commonplace. Today, no one scoffs at the mind-body health connection,

collaborative business management styles, the international fusion of foods and cuisines, the

world-class athletes in mixed martial arts, and other disciplines.

Writing about the rising global diversity of business, culture, and thought has been a long

and challenging journey. Once, an old-school senior editor asked me in the middle of a

newsroom why I liked writing stories about “little brown people.” I flinched and said, “Because

it’s important news. We should be writing more about white immigrants and rural whites, too.

The world is changing.” He grunted and shook his head.

Fortunately, today more visionary media managers – of all ages, colors, cultures, and

politics – see the stronger currents of global and business diversity. Media coverage seems to be

gradually improving. Even leading technology news sites, which focused narrowly on Silicon

Valley for many years, have gotten religion and see the virtues of global innovation in other

countries and cultures. This has nothing to do with “political correctness” (the term sounds

archaic now), and everything to do with the relentless march of demographics, commerce, and

culture.

For those over 50 who lived through the Cold War era and the nuclear arms race, who knew

that rich Russians today would own U.S. businesses, or that China’s state-run companies would

sell big-ticket goods in America? For those who lived through the 1960s, when the nation was

divided by civil rights issues and a Catholic U.S. President, who knew that Barack Obama, an

African American with global roots, and Mitt Romney, a Mormon businessman from Utah,

would vie for the White House in 2012?

Whether we like or dislike the changes, whether we agree or disagree with them, the future

is here, and our economic fate as the world’s greatest nation rests on understanding those who

are different.[6]

The era cries out for a greater global state of mind, a trans-cultural bazaar of ideas and

information. Real in-depth news is critical to free-thinking people in free-market economies, and

the demand for good journalism on diverse global topics only will surge as the world grows.

More media companies should be devoting far more resources to global news. Legions of

journalists should be telling more global stories with the same passion they bring to covering

natural disasters, the Olympics, presidential races.

Centuries ago, long before management gurus and self-help authors existed, a biblical

prophet wrote: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of

your mind . . . .”[7] A similar message rings true today. At the cusp of an extraordinary era, we

need to open our minds to new ideas, new cultures – and a new world that only will grow more

diverse by the day.

To provide a broader context for readers, I’ve written Fusion Entrepreneurs in two sections.

Part I and its mini-chapters offer a quick-hitting overview of the mega-forces shaping the global

economy and cultural diversity of the 21st century. Part II features profiles and interviews of

cross-cultural executives, entrepreneurs, and companies.

Rather than go small with this project, I trusted 30 years of news instincts and the little voice

in my head and decided to go bigger. Why? Because a longer, deeper read on such an urgent

topic offers the most lasting value for business people, travelers, and general non-fiction readers.

This e-book is worth the price of a gourmet burger or curry dish at the airport or hotel.

At its core, Fusion Entrepreneurs looks at a business galaxy that increasingly demands our

attention. In the spirit of risk-taking writers tracking the vast, moving target of globalization, I

hope that my work adds a few helpful insights. Thanks for reading and supporting authors.

Part One

The 21st Century Global Economy

and Fusion Entrepreneurs

“It might not be too strong to say that globalization is in the eyes of the

beholder. If you stare at its details long enough, some pattern may eventually

appear.”

– Michael Veseth, Globaloney: Unraveling the Myths of Globalization

(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006).

- 1 -

Parachuting into the New Economic Age

KINGDOMS RISE AND fall, but few so grandly as the changing of the guard between Great

Britain and China on July 1, 1997.

In a historical drama watched worldwide, Prince Charles ceremoniously handed back the

wealthy British colony of Hong Kong to China – 150 years after the proud Asian nation lost the

fishing village to England to end the first Opium War. As the British flag descended and the red

flag of China rose, grim-faced dignitaries and soldiers of both countries fought back tears.

Outside the gleaming Hong Kong Convention Centre, a light rain would lead to

thunderstorms and flooding in the region.[8] Mass celebrations broke out in mainland China.

Business and political elites raised their champagne glasses. The royal yacht Britannia sailed

from Hong Kong’s harbor for home, and a new economic era was born.[9]

For much of the 20th century, Hong Kong had been a famed crossroads of trade, a shining

citadel of commerce and culture. Now the gem of Great Britain’s colonial era belonged to Asia,

and the forces of globalization seemed to be shifting.

A big question loomed: beyond Hong Kong’s borders, were similar business cross-currents

spreading across other modern and emerging regions with the same speed and impact?

Scholars tell us that globalization is many centuries old, stretching from the earliest eras of

world trade to the Internet age – what Yale University’s Nayan Chanda calls from “camel

commerce to e-commerce.”[10] In the late 20th century, though, the confluence of the emerging

and advanced world, the East and West, the North and South, surely seemed to be intensifying in

all quarters.

As a journalist, I’ve spent much of my career exploring cross-cultural and business trends.

But the rise of the modern global and knowledge economy in a culturally-diverse world was a

vast subject beyond my ken in the 1990s. Today thankfully, more analysts and scholars – peering

at many different parts of the huge beast – are confirming in-depth with business and

demographic data what journalists mostly sensed anecdotally as we roamed the Pacific Rim and

other global regions.

Today, an array of powerful forces – cross-border companies, cultural diversity, the

immigration workforce, global innovation and entrepreneurship, technology and finance,

corporate governance, legal and regulatory practices, and other business developments – are

converging at a faster pace and broader scope than ever before. And like a giant cauldron, those

forces are forging a hybrid economy unlike any the world has seen. We’re at the cusp of a new

age, as the globalization of business races to another mind-blowing stage – perhaps the most

extraordinary era yet.

This is more than the Shakira-zation of the globe, or a planet ruled by Walmarts and

Starbucks. We’re at a historic pivot point, an intense period of hyper-cultural flux, and there’s no

turning back.

Every two or three generations, the world is rocked by economic and cultural upheaval that

transforms society. The late 19th century brought the Industrial Revolution and the birth of

modern capitalism, mass consumerism, and widespread global trade. The mid-20th century

ushered in the Information Age and the internationalization of Western-style business, finance,

and popular culture. Now, early in the 21st century, we’re dashing into the next dynamic period

of change, the fusion of a diverse world economy, companies, and cultures at an unprecedented

scale.

Most strikingly, modern globalization – dominated for more than a century by the United

States and Europe – is starting to reverse because of fast-growing economies and populations in

Asia, Latin America and the rest of the world, according to a recent UNESCO report.[11] And if

growth continues in emerging regions, this diversification of globalization likely will quicken

even more in a virtuous cycle of money, goods, and cultural convergence.

Samuel Palmisano, IBM’s chairman and former CEO, believes we’re at the dawn of “a new

golden age of innovation, economic growth and global citizenship.” In a 2011 speech, Palmisano

said that “we have never been more interconnected – economically, socially and technologically.

Our world has become a global system of systems . . . and that’s different from being an

assemblage of markets or nations or industries. We have global systems of transportation, of

energy, of communications, of finance, of food and water, of commerce, of security and

more.”[12]

The signs are surfacing on many fronts:

More new executives in the boardroom speak Hindi, Mandarin, Spanish. More startups and

small businesses are global and cross-border from day one. Coworkers in the next cubicle hail

from faraway ports and cities. A growing legion of large shareholders and corporate investors

call Zurich, Beijing, and Dubai their home bases. Foreign-based multinationals shop for mergers

and acquisitions on all continents. In Western pop culture and the mass media, many more

diverse images and celebrities are popping up, when only tokens appeared in earlier years.

Multibillion-dollar industries – mining, retail, auto manufacturing, media and entertainment,

professional sports, telecommunications and technology, business services, tourism and travel,

and dozens more – keep leapfrogging and expanding worldwide. And each day brings a flood of

transnational business stories that overwhelm even the most avid news junkies: Innovative

startups, from Chile to China. Promising investments, from Seoul to Sao Paulo. Multinational

partnerships, from Mumbai to Mexico City.

“The boundaries are no longer geographic and physical,” said Rhodora Palomar-Fresnedi,

global vice president at Unilever, in an interview. “The boundaries are about mindsets and

experiences. We’re meeting and greeting and interacting in ways that are very different from the

ways we looked at the world before.”[13]

Among the convergence of mega-forces driving the new business order:

Ever-increasing trade among emerging and advanced markets. Higher standards of living

and spending power among middle-class consumers in rising cities and megacities. New

technology tools and financial vehicles that are connecting the world. Popular urban and

consumer culture in fast-growing cities and megacities. Record global workforce migration and

mobility. Waves of cross-border entrepreneurship that cut across ages, genders, income levels.

Not shy about long-run forecasting, investment analysts at the old Credit Suisse First Boston

have predicted that we’re embarking on a once-a-century “epic global transformation” that has

“the potential to deliver perhaps the largest and . . . most widespread jump in wealth and living

standards ever experienced.”[14]

Long before most people noticed, those earth-shaking trends have been quietly nearing the

tipping point. Consider the biggest example: the rise of Asia. For years, a cadre of experts has

been cautioning that the rise of Asian and BRIC nations will have powerful repercussions this

century for the United States and the world.

One recent, blunt warning came from Australia former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd,

speaking to the Asia Society in New York. “For the last 130 years the United States has been the

world’s largest economy,” Rudd said. “Within the current decade, that will no longer be the case

when China takes its place.” The era of Pax Americana, he added, will be succeeded by what he

called “Pax Pacifica.”[15]

As the rest of the world raises its game, America’s business and political might could peak,

akin to a superstar athlete reaching his or her prime years. We’re heading into an era of “non-

polarity,” according to Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, as dozens of players

wield global power and no one or two powers dominate.[16] Dramatic upheaval could rattle the

globe for decades to come.

Some might be shaking their heads in disbelief over the new geopolitics. In modern times,

we’ve witnessed our share of tectonic historic events and eras: The Great Depression. Dozens of

wars and armed conflicts. The U.S. civil rights movement. The collapse of the Berlin Wall, the

Soviet Union, South African apartheid. The economic rise of China and the Third World. The

9/11 terrorist attacks in America.

And today, the massive global rebalancing of power. Like skeptics in denial about global

warming, some in the West still seem blind to the evolving economic landscape. In the 1970s

and 1980s, many failed to see that heavy smokestack manufacturing and much of our great steel

and auto industries were moving from America to other lands. In the 1990s and 2000s, many

could not see that U.S. technology and innovation were being studied and imported by the rest of

the world faster than any slow-moving exports.[17] Now, like the vast land masses grinding

along the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire, power and influence are shifting inexorably to emerging

countries and cultures.

Many American consumers are aware of the maturing U.S. economy and the worldwide

power shift. But unless they closely follow global business and political news, they may not fully

fathom the swiftness and enormity of the changes.

A casual conversation in Silicon Valley one summer day spoke volumes. After leaving my

ailing Ford at the auto repair shop, I hopped onto a bus for the long ride home. The bus was

nearly empty, save for a few loud Asian immigrant students in the back. Hot and sweaty, I joked

with the burly driver that it might be time to buy foreign. Hell, I said, China and India will be

selling cars in Detroit one day. The bus driver looked at me and said he only buys American:

Ford, Walmart, McDonald’s.

The students stopped talking to listen. I said that big U.S. companies – even those proudly

claiming to be American businesses – have been global creatures for decades. Their revenues

and employees and partners and investors haven’t stopped at U.S. borders since we were in

diapers. To make it more confusing, I said, foreign companies are pouring billions of dollars into

America and creating millions of jobs for U.S. citizens. Kia, LG, and Samsung hail from South

Korea. Haier and Lenovo from China. CITGO gas stations? Venezuela. Even the New Jersey

Nets basketball team owner is a Russian billionaire. You shell out $20,000 for a new car, I said,

and the cash circles the globe. ‘Round and ‘round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.

The bus driver was quiet for a second. “It’s the brand,” he said. “I buy American brands.”

“I wish it was that easy,” I said.

“I hear you,” he said.

Economists and scholars have said for years that “buying American” means buying globally,

and that won’t change. Whether we’re blue-collar or white-collar workers, the global megatrends

and demographic data cannot be ignored. Whether we welcome the changes or not, whether we

like or dislike the culturally different, there is no doubt that a new economic era has arrived. This

isn’t future shock. We’re already here.

A bit overwhelming, if you don’t closely follow this stuff? I don’t blame you. But we need

to wake up. Hyper-globalization only will intensify. The world’s population of 7 billion people

could rise to 9 billion to 10 billion by 2050, and the world’s gross domestic product likely will

soar to hundreds of trillions of U.S. dollars, according to various estimates. There’s no return to

the “good old days.”

Don’t get me wrong. I hold the highest respect for the generations of Americans – including

my parents and grandparents – that sacrificed much to build our country in the 20th century. My

generation, in particular, enjoyed the fruits of the post-World War II era, when the U.S.

economic miracle spawned widespread wealth and well-being for 80 million baby boomers.

Even those of us raised in poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods have reaped the benefits of

economic opportunities.[18] We’re still the finest, richest nation in history, still the model and

gold standard for the world. We have much to be proud of as a country.

But it’s a new day, a new epoch. The sweeping global developments of late cannot be

slowed by flag-waving protectionism, by closing our borders, by voting politicians in and out of

the White House and Congress. Like juggernauts, the global mega-forces keep gaining

momentum.

Leaping into the new global age will be like parachuting from an airplane. Peering outside

the plane, our stomachs will sink. We know we’ll have to jump in a few heartbeats. Stepping into

the sky, we’ll be tossed around like specks of dust. We’ll feel dizzy, disoriented, too

overwhelmed to think. Suddenly our parachutes will burst open, and we’ll float in silence over

towns, fields, highways. The horizon will stretch for miles. And as the ground rises toward us,

slowly at first, then faster and faster, we’ll either panic and land hard – or land smoothly and hit

the ground running.

A sweeping view of the world? Not sweeping enough. Too breathless? Not breathless

enough. Data and surveys will not fully convey the human scale, the vastness of the changes.

The next stage of globalization will be epic, and we’re barely beginning to grasp its magnitude

and complexity.

Don’t heed this lone journalist, typing on my old laptop, sipping cold coffee. Business

strategist Kenichi Ohmae notes that “this global economy is in its infancy,” and we are leaping

into “uncharted waters.”[19] Likewise, an IBM survey of 1,500 CEOs in 60 countries found that

most think business only will grow more complex, more volatile, more unpredictable.[20]

Atlas isn’t shrugging. He’s tilting the whole damn planet on its axis.

- 12 -

Long Tale of Globalization: More Walls to Fall?

OF COURSE, EVEN with such powerful trends, the long-run globalization of the economy and

diverse cultures is no sure thing.

Historic forces clash unpredictably. Countries and markets defy easy mapping. The super-

charged global economy seems as uncharted as the New World was to colonial explorers

centuries ago. Globalization could be crippled by brutal ethnic and religious clashes, trade wars

and financial crises, military wars and terrorism.

Harvard University professor Jeffry Frieden reminds us that the global economy invites

huge gains and risks. Trade brings cheaper foreign goods to domestic consumers, but also more

competition for domestic companies. Multinational corporations introduce new technologies and

business methods, but can drive domestic firms out of business. Governments open their borders,

which helps some citizens while hurting others. “There is no way to avoid the trade-offs inherent

in global capitalism,” Frieden writes.[184]

Some scholars and pundits contend that U.S. economic, political, and military dominance

has weakened, and that the American Empire could wane this century. Harvard University

historian Niall Ferguson warns that massive debt led to weaker empires in 17th century Spain,

18th century France, the 19th century Ottoman Empire, and Great Britain of the 20th century.

Ferguson calls it “the fatal arithmetic of imperial decline.”[185] Is the United States next? Our

$15 trillion national debt doesn’t help.

As global clout dwindles among the long-ruling G-20 countries, we may face a dangerous

period of conflict over everything from financial reform to trade policies, according to political-

risk consultant Ian Bremmer and economist Nouriel Roubini.

“We are now living in a G-Zero world,” they warn in Foreign Affairs, “one in which no

single country or bloc of countries has the political and economic leverage – or the will – to drive

a truly international agenda.”[186] Bremmer also believes that “state capitalism” – the rise of

state-owned companies and sovereign wealth funds run by China, Russia, the Gulf States, and

others – will severely challenge globalization.[187]

Economic freedom has suffered in recent years, according to the Fraser Institute, a Canadian

think tank.[188] While the average score for economic freedom in more than 100 countries grew

steadily from 1980 to 2007, the numbers fell in 2008 and 2009. Why is that critically important?

Because studies show that countries with economic freedom out-perform non-free nations in

average income, average per capita GDP, life expectancy, and other measures of economic

growth and well-being, the institute says.

The Global Risks 2011 report, by the World Economic Forum and risk-management

companies, warn that we face “a 21st century paradox” in which the world grows together and

apart at the same time.”[189] Among the greatest threats to global stability and growth:

- Economic disparity and the worsening gap between rich and poor countries and peoples.

- Troubled global governance on all issues, from trade to climate change.

- A global black market and U.S. $1.3 trillion “illegal economy” of corruption, organized

crime and other black market activities.

- Macroeconomic imbalances and economic risks such as global trade and savings

imbalances, currency volatility, and fiscal crises.

- Shortages of water, food and energy that could lead to social and political upheaval and

irreversible environmental damage.

An equally-stark recent report, by the OECD and PBL, states bluntly that “the sheer scale of

economic and population growth” has overwhelmed any progress made on the environmental

front.[190] Slow, piece-by-piece progress won’t be enough to ward off “irreversible and

potentially catastrophic changes” to the planet, the researchers warn.

Regardless of one’s politics, the nightmarish scenario of global warming no longer can be

denied. As the world’s temperature rises several degrees in the coming decades, our planet may

well be devastated by mega-disasters and other horrific catastrophes, predict a growing chorus of

international scientists.[191] All of the hybrid cars and solar panels in the world won’t make a

difference. British physicist Stephen Hawking even believes that mankind must build space

colonies to survive this century.

For certain, it’s a scary and uncertain time. Doomsayers in every epoch have cautioned

about globalization. Despite the many warnings, though, no one – not economists and scientists,

not historians and analysts, not lawmakers and business leaders – knows exactly where we’re

heading. Place your bets. Take your best educated guess. Is the world flat or curved? Is

capitalism ending or still evolving? Are we racing toward a golden age of globalization, or

toward decline and destruction?

Many remain cautiously optimistic. Paul Gilding, a global sustainability expert and author of

The Great Disruption, thinks that disasters and food and water shortages will severely test the

human race.[192] But faced with global catastrophe, he believes that we will rally and rebuild a

fossil-free economy that will sustain us for generations. Meanwhile, the McKinsey Global

Institute has urged business and government leaders to launch a “resource revolution” to meet

this century’s massive demand for food, water, energy, and materials.[193] Philip Auerswald, an

economist and professor at George Mason University, sees an “epochal promise of prosperity”

that is “every bit as tangible for Peoria as it is for Beijing.”[194] Still others look to altruistic

values, the belief that a kinder gentler capitalism and socially-responsible businesses will change

the world.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz calls for sweeping reform of modern

economic globalization. He contends that globalization can bring equal economic and social

benefits to all nations – if globalization is managed well by governments, politicians, and

financial institutions. Another world is necessary and inevitable, he believes. “The good news is

that economics is not zero-sum,” Stiglitz writes. “We can restructure globalization so that those

in the developed and the developing world, the current generations and future generations, can

all benefit . . . .”[195]

As for journalists? We’re trained scavengers, flocking to bad news like vultures to road kill.

We hunt for scandals, prey on misfortune.[196] On the never-ending tale of globalization,

though, I am surprisingly optimistic about the future. Despite my usual skepticism as a reporter

(“If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” goes the old newspaper reporter’s saying),

I’m hopeful about our economic fate in the coming decades. All is not gloom and doom for Earth

& Company.

In a leap of faith that defies vetting and fact-checking, I’ll side with long-term global

progress. In this century’s great business race, I’ll vote for the human spirit and the long arc of

civilization – even an all-encompassing soul[197] – to transcend the blind worship of sales data

and stock prices. As sappy as it may sound to some, even in the worst of times there will be

undying faith and glimmers of transcendent hope – akin to what U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass

has called “faint music . . . a hovering like grace.”[198]

Short of global destruction, steady economic and cultural evolution seems a likelier bet than

worldwide stagnation. The health of all nations will trump a longstanding global depression or

worse. Corporations and countries and people will be compelled to keep growing, to keep pace

with world markets, with the population explosion, with the near-endless demand for goods and

resources. Cross-border trade only will rise as an economic force for greater globalization. Study

after study show that open and liberal trade – especially in countries with strong economic

policies and business regulations – spur economic growth, create jobs and markets, boost

productivity and income levels.[199]

As William Bernstein, author of A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, puts

it: “World trade has yielded not only a bounty of material goods, but also of intellectual and

cultural capital, an understanding of our neighbors, and a desire to sell things to others rather

than annihilate them.” Bernstein believes that trade has been so deeply-rooted in human nature

from mankind’s earliest eras to modern times that “to turn back would risk revisiting the darkest

episodes of the twentieth century.”

Even long-suffering North Korea, among the most isolated countries in the world, appears to

be slowly opening economic cracks to survive.[200] Middle-class consumerism and public

markets have surfaced in the capital city of Pyongyang. More North Koreans are watching

foreign DVDs and listening to foreign radio and CDs. Politics between South and North Korea

remain volatile, but South Korean businesses and North Korean laborers make and assemble

goods at the Kaeson Industrial Complex near the border. And North Korea trade is growing with

China, South Korea, the Middle East, Brazil, and Southeast Asia.

As long as humans strive to survive and to raise their standards of living, the drive to create,

to innovate, to make money, won’t wane. New and diverse ways of doing business – from

cleaner, greener industries to more socially-responsible investing – will keep the global economy

thriving.

Perhaps more than any other industry, technology will continue to bring together the world.

As 7 billion people link through computing devices, we’ll meet at 7 billion points of

convergence. New business, cultural, and political ties will emerge. The good of technology will

outweigh the dangers of cybercrime, censorship, and electronic warfare. And short of destroying

the entire Internet, no government, legal regime, or global corporation can stop the virtual

revolution.

“Freedom wins, and openness wins,” Netscape founder Marc Andreessen wrote in his blog.

“You can hold it back for some period of time, but in the long run, freedom always wins because

freedom and openness let people all over the world be fully creative and innovative in every way

they want.”[201] Similarly, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a founding father of the Web, wrote: “The goal

of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able

to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.”[202]

As economies rise in developing nations, many believe that cultural growth and political

liberalization follow, and that democracies and democratic values likely will keep spreading

around the world. Iron-fisted dictatorships in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East may make the

daily news, but freedom-oriented societies are winning. As of 2011, democracies and partial

democracies made up 76% of 195 nations in the world, according to Freedom House, which

studies the civil liberties and political rights of countries.

Contrary to the popular belief that only the West loves freedom, people of widely-varying

cultures in Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Russia believe universally that

democracy, despite its flaws, remains the best government system, according to the World

Values Survey and senior fellow Larry Diamond at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

“The broad arc of history since 1974 looks extraordinarily positive,” Diamond writes in The

Spirit of Democracy. “The world has gone from dictatorship to democracy . . . in most parts of

the world.”[203]

At the same time, people gradually will come together, as we have throughout modern

history. Beyond the political and cultural chasms, we share more common ground and an

impulse toward community and humanity. To survive in the modern world, no nation or

economy or culture can stay isolated forever. The walls between modern peoples and cultures

will erode with each era.

Imagine all that has transpired during the eras of our parents, grandparents, great-

grandparents. When viewed over a lifetime, the changes are monumental: The Industrial Age.

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam. The rise of America’s economic and political

empire. The end of the Cold War. The U.S. civil-rights and women’s movement. The death of

South African apartheid, and the recognition of basic human rights in much of the world. The

fall of dictatorships in the Soviet Union, East Germany, and other lands. The global impact of

science, medicine, technology. Explosive economic growth and higher living standards. The

revolutions and reforms sweeping the Middle East and Africa.

The historic changes may seem snail-like in the age of the Internet and space flight. For

sure, deep-seated values and practices in societies and institutions may take generations to

evolve. But structural change doesn’t begin with grand gestures. It starts in small steps,

unnoticed at first, then growing gradually. Change can take place almost anywhere in our little

corners and cubicles of the world, in countless workplaces. The many one-on-one biases that

each of us carry can be smashed anytime we’d like to smash them, with a simple change of mind

and heart.

Look at our offices and work teams, our lunch and drinking buddies, our executives and

board directors. Many of us feel more at ease with colleagues and classmates who look like us,

who remind us of us. It’s natural, self-selecting, survival-type behavior that we engage in from

childhood to adulthood, from school to the workplace.

But whether we realize it or not, those biases and behaviors stunt our growth, our vision, our

productivity. They screen and filter anything remotely different, while welcoming only the

familiar and comfortable. In free-thinking and advanced countries, our biased actions amount to

self-imposed segregation throughout our lives and careers.

“The foreignness of foreigners, the strangeness of strangers: these things are real enough,”

wrote Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Princeton University philosophy professor. “It’s just that

we’ve been encouraged . . . to exaggerate their significance by an order of magnitude.”[204]

Similarly, Carmen Van Kerckhove, a diversity consultant and founder of New Demographic

Diversity, said that cultural biases – from subtle social slights to outright racism – simply “deny

us our humanity, deny us the ability to see the humanity in others . . . because we don’t see each

other as equals.”[205]

Clinging to workplace biases surely is management by myopia, a self-defeating business

practice. It wastes the talents of millions that we typecast and segregate, like so many zombie-

like wage slaves.

Years ago, I recall one pot-bellied male boss saying that a soft-spoken female colleague

wasn’t tough enough to be a manager. Guess what? This woman ran marathons in her free time.

Who wouldn’t want that powerhouse employee as a teammate or project leader in their

company? In today’s challenging world, a lively and well-managed crew of diverse players –

moving as a real team with complementary skills, strengths, and backgrounds – boasts more

creativity and productivity than an office full of lemmings.

George Haber, CEO of Cresta Technology and a successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valley,

is a big believer in the fusing of cross-cultural talent and knowledge. Haber was born in

Transylvania, Romania, studied computer science and worked as a disc jockey in Haifa, Israel,

then landed in Silicon Valley at Sun Microsystems where he helped to design Sun’s flagship

microprocessors. “It may be easier to marry people you know in your own village,” Haber said in

an interview, “but if you only marry your cousins, the children are not going to be very healthy.”

Bosses befuddled by true diversity can power down and reboot their brains. From a blank

slate, view others not through the same narrow lenses, but from varied angles and views. Easy to

say, hard to do.

Team morale and productivity hang on your management chops, on your skills at leading a

workforce of many classes, cultures, colors. Do your troops respect you, or did you lose them

long ago? Will they face corporate battles with you, or trash you the first chance they get? Ask

your employees. If you’ve earned their trust, they’ll tell you bluntly and honestly, from many

diverse perspectives. Little will be lost in translation.

In Silicon Valley, Apple – one of corporate history’s most fabled, successful, and criticized

companies – offers a valuable lesson. Apple’s famed advertising slogan, “Think Different,” was

created to sell sleek computing devices and the iconic image of late Apple co-founder Steve

Jobs. But beyond its commercial intent, the simple slogan also speaks to the spirit of the new

cultural and economic order.

The world demands not suffocating sameness, but diverse and daring thinking – whether

creating new tech tools, selling to global consumers, or managing a multicultural workforce. To

see the world anew, we need more business rebels and mavericks, not more clones and drones.

And as global convergence grows stronger, we’ll have to embrace more fresh ideas and practices

to thrive.

Little should stop us from creating true cross-cultural enterprises, from hiring and promoting

the best, from linking with those who are different. As the business world changes, we have to

transcend the one-way thinking and psychological barriers that block us from others – what

journalist Joel Dreyfuss of The Root has called “intellectual apartheid.”[206]

Economic eras evolve. Cultural values change. Some thought that apartheid was so deeply

entrenched in South African society that it would never collapse – but it did, after much pressure

from activists, businesses, investors, governments. Some fancied that women would never fight

in the military, or rocket into space, or lead nations and corporations – but they do, and their

ranks will grow. Some believed that the Chinese and other “Third World” people and cultures

never would grow into global economic forces, but they have, very quickly. Some believed that

gays and lesbians would never marry or start families – but today, openly gay couples of all

political and religious persuasions are creating new social models for the 21st century.[207]

Likewise, I’m optimistic about a more diverse future in business, with cross-cultural

companies and executives at the vanguard.[208] As globalization marches onward, the new

model of diversity – encompassing more castes and classes than ever before – will sweep the

workplace. Companies will evolve to keep pace with business and demographic megatrends. It

has happened over generations, and it will happen again.

While many debated civil rights in the political arena, a nation of corporations was adoping

equal-opportunity policies in the workplace. While a cultural war raged over gay rights,

companies from American Airlines to Walt Disney introduced benefits for gay employees. As

global climate change, human rights, and other socially-responsible issues rise in importance,

companies from GE to Walmart are working closely with scientists, environmentalists, and labor

activists around the world.

Similarly, when it comes to global workforce diversity, business leaders will break fresh

ground and will build new models throughout the 21st century. The finest global executives and

entrepreneurs clearly are changing the world.[209] They’re spearheading the charge from San

Francisco to Sao Paulo, from Mumbai to Shanghai. Their leadership will touch millions for

generations to come.

And yet, the most urgent advice for global businesses may not come from a superstar CEO

or a hedge-fund billionaire. The most important guidance may come from a famed American

spiritual leader.

During his 1964 Nobel lecture, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called on mankind to build a

fellowship beyond tribes, castes, and nations. “We have inherited a big house, a great ‘world

house’ in which we have to live together. . .” King said. “We must now give an overriding

loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in our individual societies . . . Let us

hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.”[210]

Long after his death, King’s message will take on greater value for global companies and

business leaders than their next quarterly earnings calls. Business data and metrics are important,

but can miss the shifts and social currents in real life by years. We’re clearly at a time of great

cultural flux, a historic pivot point. If we just peer past the cultural blinders in our borderless,

polyglot world, more walls will fall.

No doubt, commerce and culture are fusing in ways unimagined years ago. A confluence of

forces and a global state of mind are reshaping our economic fate. Our DNA hails from Africa,

our computer tablets from Asia. Brainpower and the colors of currency know no boundaries. And

the emerging cadre of corporate leaders and entrepreneurs will help to revolutionize the business

world.

Kingdoms rise and fall, and the hybrids of the new economic era cannot be ignored. Global

diversity and its multihued players make for universal tales that transcend boundaries. For better

and worse, we’re all cross-breeds now.

Part Two

Profiles and Interviews

“Globalization has a human face, but we can make that face yet more

agreeable.”

– Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

- 20 -

The Pi Brothers: Sports Entrepreneurs

Bring Mixed Martial Arts to China

THE POWERFUL LEG kick arced toward him like a baseball bat.

Andy Pi, a young martial arts instructor in Beijing, instinctively raised his arm to block his

foe’s attack. There was a sickening thud as the kick struck Pi’s forearm, cleanly snapping the

bone in half. The jolting pain nearly felled the jiu-jitsu fighter. It was nearly a decade ago, and

the husky Pi was battling in an amateur martial arts tournament in China, before his students and

a crowd of fight fans.

Pi had just opened the first Brazilian jiu-jitsu school in Beijing. He had spent many months

touting the martial art, a deadly blend of traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu and Brazilian-style ground

fighting. Brazilian jiu-jitsu had revolutionized the martial arts in the United States, fusing with

wrestling, boxing, and Asian-style kick-boxing to raise mixed martial arts (MMA) to a new

level. Pi had been taught by legendary martial artist Royce Gracie, one of the sport’s great

champions from the Gracie family, a martial arts dynasty from Brazil.

Pi’s fight in China was barely into the first round. The Gracie family honor was at stake, and

Pi’s students were watching. Not wanting to lose face, Pi fought through the pain. Sweat stung

his eyes, and adrenalin surged through his body, numbing the hurt.

As the small crowd yelled encouragement, Pi spun and caught his opponent in a tight arm-

lock hold called an arm bar. If his foe resisted, Pi could snap the man’s arm in two, leaving him

screaming in pain on the mat. But his rival tapped out, and Pi’s students roared.

“I was young and proud, and I couldn’t quit,” Pi said. “At the time, it was the most

important event in my life and career. There was no room for failure.”

Pi went straight to a nearby hospital, where doctors cut open his arm, squeezed the bone

together, and put a pin in his elbow. During his rehabilitation, Pi could not train for three months

or roll on the mat until he healed completely. So the restless Pi used the long break to reflect over

his life and work.

At home or the hospital, his mind moved as quickly as a fighter delivering a knockout blow

or a bone-crushing submission. His brain overflowed with ideas, including one long-held dream

that he never took too seriously – until now.

AS HE NURSED his injury, Andy Pi could not have imagined that, a few years later, he and his

brother Konrad would organize the first major MMA sports events in Beijing.

The Pi brothers would co-found a sports entertainment business called the Art of War

Fighting Championship, modeled after the lucrative Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)

franchise in the United States. The glitzy Art of War events, pitting Chinese fighters against foes

from around the world, would be held in sports arenas and aired across China to many millions

of sports fans.

There were no childhood signs that the Pi brothers would become budding sports moguls.

Born in China, the brothers were grade-school kids when their parents, Frank and Serena Pi,

moved the family to Fremont, California, U.S.A., a middle-class suburb of Silicon Valley. Later,

they would live in San Diego, a sunny, seaside city just north of Mexico.

Frank Pi was an executive and consultant for EDS, IBM, and Ernst & Young, jetting around

the globe for his work. His boys were typical California kids of Asian immigrants, studying hard,

playing sports and video games. Serena Pi said that young Konrad showed flashes of business

talent during grade-school fundraising drives, selling coupons to neighbors to win prizes. If the

neighbors turned him down, Konrad would ring their doorbells again and again, until they

bought the coupons to get rid of him.

After earning a psychology degree at the University of California at Riverside, Andy Pi

taught at a school for emotionally-disturbed children. In 1997, though, he jetted to China to visit

relatives for a few weeks. The new China – hip, urban, trans-cultural in the big cities – fascinated

him. Childhood memories also came rushing back.

He soon decided to stay. “A vacation turned into a 12-year stint,” Pi said. For money, he

worked on tech projects for EDS. But toiling over network control centers and bank credit-card

systems didn’t thrill him.

Amid his soul-searching, Andy Pi realized that he always had been intrigued by the mixed

martial arts, enjoying the physical and mental challenge of the sport. Long ago shedding its

bloody reputation as “human cock-fighting,” MMA entails complex fighting skills and

techniques that take athletes many years to master. Its top practitioners are among the toughest

and most respected athletes in the world, and you rarely see jocks from other contact sports

stepping into the ring.

Pi did not fight professionally, but he had gotten hooked on the sport while training with

Gracie in Los Angeles. When Pi moved back to China, he had founded the Beijing Jiu-Jitsu

Academy, the first school to teach the Brazilian jiu-jitsu style in China. Word had spread about

the school, and students showed up to fill the mats.

As his broken arm healed, Andy Pi knew he couldn’t return to his office job. He could get

excited every day about preaching the martial arts gospel, not sweating over computer networks.

Pi wanted to spread MMA beyond Beijing, to the masses in China. The country boasts a long

and proud history in wushu, or martial arts, but few world-class Chinese athletes competed in

high-profile MMA competitions.

“I thought about it for awhile and said f-ck it, I want to do something that I’m passionate

about,” he said. “I want to promote MMA fights in China.”

Andy Pi called younger brother Konrad back in California. A management science graduate

from the University of California at San Diego, Konrad worked as an investment manager and a

private helicopter pilot, He understood numbers, and he understood risk. And while he loved

flying ‘copters, he was getting tired of giving rides to rich people.

“I didn’t want to be a chauffeur the rest of my life,” Konrad said. Konrad also had studied

jiu-jitsu for several years, and he was an avid MMA fan. The brothers brainstormed ideas, and

got even more excited. “This is awesome,” Konrad told Andy. “We can do it, but it’ll be very,

very difficult.”

KONRAD QUICKLY BROKE down the pros and cons. The upside: MMA was a fast-growing

and reputable professional sport with vast global potential. Led by the Las Vegas-based UFC –

which stages huge events broadcast on pay TV from the MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and other

high-profile hotels – the multibillion-dollar sport has found a loyal and passionate fan base of

young men and women (up to 40% of fans are female) who will pay big bucks to see their

favorite athletes.

In China, the martial arts are its national past-time – what the Pi brothers called “the baseball

of China, the mom and apple pie of China,” with 60 million people practicing the martial arts,

from kung fu to tai chi. Moreover, China’s hundreds of millions of middle-class consumers were

hungry for world-class sports entertainment, with the Beijing Summer Olympics on the horizon.

The downside: Strict government bureaucracy and control. The logistical challenges of

staging big public events for thousands of spectators. The task of raising money for a high-risk

venture in a country that has turned away many Western business moguls.

Konrad Pi floated the idea past at least 50 potential investors. Nearly all were skeptical, and

many stopped taking his calls. But the earnest and persistent Pi found a few interested investors,

including former American football star Rashaan Salaam, the winner of the 1994 Heisman

Trophy, the prestigious award that goes to the best college football player in the United States.

Now the company-in-the-making needed a name. Scribbling ideas on napkins in a diner, they

gave birth to the Adoria Entertainment Group, their privately-held sports management firm.

(Adoria means “success” or “victory” in Latin.)

To launch the Art of War Fighting Championship, the Pi brothers and their parents worked

their business and family ties in China, to cut through the bureaucracy. Chinese government

contacts in several different offices helped them to land key permits and other requirements to

stage sports events.

“You’ve got to do it the Chinese way,” Andy Pi said. “One wrong move can really mess you

up. Yeah, it’s bureaucratic, but no more bureaucratic than the United States. Try putting on an

MMA production in Las Vegas. They give you 20 pages of bureaucracy. You’ve got to do this,

this, this, this, and this.”

The Pi family’s fluency in Mandarin and understanding of Chinese cultural values didn’t

hurt, either. “If you can’t even communicate with someone, how can you possibly understand

their cultural traditions?” Andy Pi said. “And if you don’t understand their cultural traditions,

how can you do business with them?”

Andy Pi said that arrogant Western business people fail in China. He said he was one of

those arrogant foreigners himself years ago. But his father and mother imparted valuable lessons

to him. “My parents taught me to be respectful to others,” he said, “and that’s especially useful

for doing business in China, where respect and face are important to your partners. You have to

learn to give face, not tear off a person’s face.”

Serena Pi said that her boys clearly are independent Americans, but they’re learning quickly

about Chinese traditions and thinking, with the help of older family members.

The brothers also have been motivated by the fear of failing their family, of not rising to

their parents’ expectations. Cultural values and familial obligation run deep. “My parents did

very well for us, raising us in an upper-middle-class home in the U.S.” Konrad Pi said. “We

didn’t want to let them down.”

THE ART OF WAR Fighting Championship’s first show took place in 2005 in a small, cramped

gym in Beijing before only 100 people. Fans sat on metal fold-out chairs, and the large display

screen didn’t work. “It was complete chaos, but people loved it,” Andy Pi said.

Leap forward to 2009, when the Pi brothers staged perhaps their biggest show: a glitzy

brawl fest at the National Olympic Sports Center in Beijing. The nearly sold-out event drew

celebrities, business tycoons, and a crowd that wildly cheered the Chinese fighters. Hong Kong

film star Karen Mok, sports announcer Michael “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!” Buffer, and

renowned fight referee “Big John” McCarthy added their star power to the night. The Pi brothers

even flew in the Gracie family from Brazil and the United States to enjoy the event.

Fireworks flaring, rock and rap music blaring, the martial artists were introduced one by one

on a large stage. A giant video screen broadcast the action. The fans’ favorite fighter: rising star

Wu Hao Tian, a charismatic young warrior who quickly pounded his Japanese opponent into The

Floating World. Posing and flexing his muscles for the cameras, Wu let out a Bruce Lee-style

yelp to celebrate.

In the main fight, Brazilian jiu-jitsu legend Rolles Gracie battles a Russian fighter. Lights

flash, the crowd roars, and music by Lil’ Jon blares across the arena. Donovan Craig, former

editor-in-chief of Fight! Magazine, turned to me and said: “If you want a metaphor for

globalization in MMA, here it is: a Russian making his entrance to music by a rapper from

Atlanta to fight a Brazilian at a show in Beijing.”[372]

The Art of War Fighting Championship brand is drawing more attention from corporate

types and MMA experts. China has never seen a MMA sports event of this magnitude, and

businesses have dollar signs and yuan notes in their eyes. Venetian and MGM Mirage executives

from Macau and Hong Kong eyed the fights with keen interest, and deals have been signed for

future fights in those regions. Intrigued HDNet executives and wealthy dignitaries from the

Middle East also checked out the action.

The Pi brothers said that revenue comes from broadcasting rights, pay-per-view shows, and

merchandising of Art of War Fighting Championship clothing and other products. Media

exposure also is growing, with the fights broadcast across mainland China, Hong Kong and other

Asian countries via CCTV-5, China’s government-run sports channel, and NMTV, or Inner

Mongolia Satellite TV. The events also can be seen online on Sohu Sports and Tencents’

QQ.com, the largest online chat community in China.[373] Meanwhile, Adoria Entertainment is

talking with more potential corporate sponsors and broadcast partners in Asia and the United

States. They’ve already signed on Budweiser, with more major multinationals to come.

The global competition is formidable. In MMA sports entertainment, the Ultimate Fighting

Championship is the first mover and dominant player. Owned by Las Vegas businessmen Frank

and Lorenzo Fertitta and sports management firm Zuffa, the UFC isn’t sitting still on the

international scene. UFC fights are popular in Europe and Australia, and UFC fights are shown

in China by online giant Sohu.com and NMTV.

“Obviously China is a huge market and the Chinese understand the martial arts probably

better than anyone else in the world,” said UFC president Dana White. “It’s a no brainer that

UFC programming will be appreciated in China, and will become a big hit for the NMTV

network.”[374]

The Pi brothers praised the UFC as the best MMA organization in world. But they think the

Art of War Fighting Championship brand brings a fresh, new Asian perspective to the MMA

party. “The growth here is exponential, as compared to other industries in the United States,”

Konrad Pi said. “What China often does is leapfrog certain steps when it comes to introducing

new products and services to the market. I see that happening here (with MMA).”

Longtime MMA industry experts think there’s room for another successful MMA franchise

in the global market. “While the western half of the martial arts world has its eyes firmly focused

on the Ultimate Fighting Championship,” wrote MMAWeekly.com, “the eastern hemisphere is

witnessing the dawn of a new element in the fight game.”[375] No country has more potential

for MMA than China, and the Pi brothers are the pioneering entrepreneurs, according to Monte

Cox, a promoter and manager for many top fighters. “I don’t think any foreigner with his

brashness is going to walk into China and put on an MMA show,” Cox said, “so you’ve got the

Pi brothers paving the way.” Donovan Craig added: “This is a robust sport that is really taking

off globally, and Art of War is building a local talent base in a market that everyone is very

excited about.”

The Pi brothers are gambling that Chinese consumers and China’s 65 million martial arts

practitioners will quickly embrace Art of War Fighting Championship. Among modern nations,

China may boast the world’s “richest martial-arts legacy and warrior culture . . . from ancient

combat in the Warring States period and Three Kingdoms era, to influential military manuals

such as the Art of War, and to styles such as Shaolin kung fu and tai ji quan,” according to

sportswriter Jad Semaan for NMTV.com.[376]

The Chinese take great pride in their warrior-athletes, and the Art of War Fighting

Championship features Chinese Olympic athletes and national and world champions in judo,

karate, Greco-Roman wrestling, sanshou and other fighting styles. But MMA experts think that

Chinese athletes need a bit more time to evolve into world-class athletes who can take on top

MMA athletes.

Andy and Konrad Pi know they must grow in the sports management field. They’re still

young as senior executives go, and they’ve been heeding the advice of older Chinese and

American business and sports hands. The brothers make a good fit, complementing each other’s

skills. Andy, as CEO, focuses on the events and the fighters, putting together the matches, while

company president Konrad Pi handles the business and financial side.

If the Pi brothers rush in like a cocky fighter, swinging wildly and gassing out quickly, they

could stumble, according to sports and media experts. But if Art of War Fighting Championship

moves forward at a steady pace, gaining experience and respect in the sports business realm, it

could succeed on a larger scale, said Eddie Goldman, host and producer of the No Holds Barred

Internet radio show.

A FEW HOURS after the big fight night, I sat down with Andy Pi at the event command center

at a fancy Crowne Plaza Hotel, near the Beijing Olympic Stadium. He was bleary-eyed and

distracted, fielding never-ending phone calls, apologizing for the many delays.

When I ask him where the operation must improve, he reels off a partial long list: Better

communication and logistics. More staff and outside contractors. More marketing and promotion

to build the fan base. Stronger content for TV and Internet broadcasts. In short, almost

everything.

As a sports writer in college, I had interviewed a good number of Olympic and All-

American collegiate athletes, usually right after their training. I always was struck by their harsh

and demanding self-analysis. That’s what Andy Pi was doing. Sitting in an office chair, staring

ahead as if I wasn’t there, he was replaying thshow in his mind. He was studying the film and

visualizing his next move, his next opponent.

Some executives and entrepreneurs can be as phony as politicians in an election year. It can

be hard to see past the shiny veneer, the public relations spin. In contrast, I found the Pi brothers

to be refreshingly open, respectful, and down-to-earth.

Consider what happened after the MMA event. Leaving late, I wandered from the sports

arena into the night air, a long walk from the nearest cabs. Only security guards remained.

Exhausted, I shuffled down an unlit side road, looking for a busy main street.

A plain minivan sped past me, then suddenly braked and backed up. The side door slid open.

“Edward?” a voice said. “Do you need a ride?” It was Andy Pi, with his wife and two little kids.

He had noticed my American-style body language in the dark. “A ride would be great,” I said.

“I’m completely lost.”

Sounding like a Chinese uncle taking pity on an orphan, Pi said, “We’re going to eat now,

and I’d like you to join my family for dinner. You flew all the way to China. It’s the least I can

do.”

The fighters picked up that humble, generous vibe, too. For fearless athletes who pound each

other into bloody submission, there’s a real sense of honor about them, and they went out of their

way to show respect to the Pi family.

After the Art of War Fighting Championship event in Beijing, the fighters and their crews

gathered at the hotel to party and hang in the lobby and bar. These are men who could cripple a

sleazy boss in seconds. But dozens congratulated the Pi brothers, clasping their hands and

hugging them. This was not Asian kow-towing or Western brown-nosing, but genuine

appreciation for the Pi’s hard work in introducing MMA to China.

“These guys put on a good show,” said Bas Rutten, a former MMA champion and

broadcaster. “These guys are good guys.”

As relatively new entrepreneurs, though, Andy and Konrad Pi face brutal competition. Art

of War Fighting Championship has struggled as the UFC, China Top Team, and other rival

MMA organizations continue to grow. Art of War Fighting Championship has been on “a long

hiatus,” according to spokesman Al Yu, and various delays and other urgent projects have kept

the Pi brothers from staging recent fights. According to Kung Fu Magazine, several top fighters

have left Art of War Fighting Championship to fight for China Top Team, but Andy Pi is

working with investors to launch an even bigger MMA promotion.[377]

It’s unclear whether Art of War Fighting Championship will tap out completely, or survive

and keep fighting as a new sports entity. Regardless of what happens, it’s clear that the Pi

brothers took bold and risky steps to launch a startup in a new industry in China. While many

other entrepreneurs and investors here have been bloodied and beaten, the Pi’s fledgling sports

promotion managed to survive for several years in a cutthroat business climate.

Andy Pi’s entrepreneurial spirit surely rivals his martial-arts spirit. It’s hard to ignore a man

who won that fierce jiu-jitsu match, even after breaking his arm.

“We have an intense burden on our shoulders,” Andy Pi said. “China has a great tradition of

martial arts, and it needs MMA badly . . . Why don’t we see Chinese fighters at the highest-level

MMA tournaments in the world? We have to change that.”

End Notes

– Preface –

[1] Michael Veseth, Globaloney: Unraveling the Myths of Globalization (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield

Publishers, 2006), p. 228. This enjoyable book takes on authors guilty of grand theories and metaphors on

globalization. That means all of us, doesn’t it? Veseth, a professor of international political economy at

the University of Puget Sound, writes on page 2: “Globalization is not one single thing; it is a collection

of things, some tightly intertwined, some loosely connected if at all . . . Impossible to define with

precision, but you know it when you see it: that’s globalization.”

[2] Theodore Levitt, “The Globalization of Markets,” Harvard Business Review, May-June 1983.

[3] The late journalist George B. Leonard, a senior editor at the old Look magazine in the 1960s, explored

the sweeping cultural shifts in civilization in The Transformation: A Guide to the Inevitable Changes in

Humankind (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972). His book is not a business or political tract, but a

spiritual manifesto for the new age. The writings of Leonard and other visionary journalists and essayists

introduced me to new geographies of the mind when I was a student and young reporter.

[4] Globalization is a story older than the printing press, so trespassing journalists owe much thanks to

scholars, analysts, and others who have spent their careers studying the subject. Gary Gereffi, a Duke

University sociology professor, notes that “the topic of the global economy is inherently interdisciplinary.

No single academic field can encompass it, nor can any afford to ignore it . . . Scholars in this field thus

have to master what economist Albert Hirschman has popularized as ‘the art of trespassing.’ “ See: Gary

Gereffi, “The Global Economy: Organization, Governance, and Development” in The Handbook of

Economic Sociology (Princeton: Princeton University Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), p. 160.

[5] Teresa Watanabe, “Esalen’s Identity Crisis,” Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2004.

[6] Media diversity in editorial coverage and workforce hiring remains a serious issue in the United

States, especially as the demand grows for global news. Several media organizations have worked hard on

the issue for decades. In 1994, I organized diversity workshops for the historic UNITY conference of

minority journalism groups in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. The truly inclusive workshops that welcomed

everyone were full of energy and optimism, and the conference seemed to symbolize a real sea change. I

was hopeful that we would see more of U.S. society reflected in newsrooms, but there has been little

progress since then. Over the long run, though, I’m optimistic. Change is inevitable, as business and

demographic megatrends compel the media to evolve, to keep pace with the world.

–Richard Karpel and Ken Fleming, “Total and minority newsroom employment declines in 2011 but loss

continues to stabilize,” American Society of News Editors (ASNE), Reynolds Journalism Institute,

Missouri School of Journalism School, 4/4/2012.

–Bob Papper, Hofstra University, and Radio Television Digital News Association, “Hofstra Survey Finds

Mixed News for Women and Minorities in TV, Radio News,” 2011.

–Jean Marie Brown, Maynard Institute, and Nieman Reports, “Familiar Patterns of Minority Exclusion

Follow Mainstream Media Online,” 2011.

–Robin H. Pugh Yi and Craig T. Dearfield, “The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2012,” Women’s

Media Center.

–Sarah Macharia, Dermot O’Connor and Lilian Ndangam, “Who Makes the News?”, Global Media

Monitoring Project, September 2010.

[7] New American Standard Bible, New Testament, Romans 12:2: “And do not be conformed to this age,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that

which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

– Chapter 1: Parachuting into the New Economic Age –

[8] Edwin S.T. Lai, “East and West – The Weather Version,” Hong Kong Meteorological Society

Bulletin, Volume 9, No. 1/2, 1999. An omen? Meteorologists called the stormy weather the “Handover

Rains,” a clashing of strong weather systems from the South China Sea in the East and the Pacific Ocean

in the West. During an earlier outdoor ceremony covered by the media the day of the handover, I noticed

that a heavy rain started the very second that British dignitaries began speaking to the crowd.

[9] Edward Iwata, “Hong Kong Changing of the Guard: Global audience to watch as China regains

sovereignty,” San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, June 22, 1997.

[10] Nayan Chanda, Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped

Globalization (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007).

[11] UNESCO World Report, “Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue,” 2009, p. 14.

[12] Samuel J. Palmisano, “Thoughts on the Future of Leadership,” IBM Think Forum keynote speech,

September 20, 2011.

[13] Conference Board, “Corporate Diversity and Inclusion Conference” in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.,

May 13-14, 2009.

[14] Credit Suisse First Boston (Al Jackson, Jack Kirnan, Stefano Natella, David Mathers, S.J. Hwang,

Theresia Tolxdorff, Peter Romanzina, Kent Wilson, Jose Carlos Mendonca, Laura Morgan, Ann

Funkhouser, Jim Gartenlaub, Dee Dee Storms, et.al.), “The New Millennium Project: Equity Research,”

1999. This nearly 1,000-page report took a visionary look at the 21st century global economy. The report

also cites another Credit Suisse First Boston paper, “Prosperity or Decline?” by Giles Keating and

Jonathan Wilmot, from 1992:

“Each economic cycle conceals a different structural transformation: a transformation in which some

regions prosper and others decline; in which some industries and firms flourish while others disappear; in

which new products, processes, and forms of organization are introduced while new tastes and social

trends emerge to challenge or blend with tradition.

“About once every 50 to 70 years, it seems, there arrives such a cluster of new innovations –

technological, commercial, even cultural – that this continuous process takes on a more explosive aspect.

The scale of change becomes vast . . . The foundations of new industrial empires and fortunes are laid,

(and) world leadership often passes from one city, country, or region to another.

“This is what is happening today: a seismic shift in the world’s economic and political relationships . . .

Culturally, at least, it is probably a once-in-a-century upheaval . . . . “

[15] Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia, “The Prospects for Peace in the Pacific: The Future

of the Expanded East Asia Summit,” speech at Asia Society New York, January 13, 2012.

Analysts such as Joshua Kurlantzick of the Pacific Council on International Policy have long urged the

United States to strengthen its ties with Asian countries in the new era of “Pax Asia-Pacifica.” See “Pax

Asia-Pacifica? East Asian Integration and Its Implications for the United States,” Washington Quarterly,

Summer 2007, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 67 – 77.

Around the same time, Kishore Mahbubani, a dean and public-policy professor at the National University

of Singapore, wrote a compelling account of the rise of Asia in his book, The New Asian Hemisphere:

The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008).

[16] Richard N. Haass, “The Age of Nonpolarity: What Will Follow U.S. Dominance,” Foreign Affairs,

May/June 2008, Vol. 87, No. 3, p. 44. Some scholars contend that the rise of emerging countries is

inevitable, while others believe that America will hold on to our global leadership through the century.

See also:

–Michael Beckley, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure,” International Security, Winter

2011/2012, p. 41.

–Kishore Mahbubani, “Can America Fail?,” Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2009, Vol. 33, No. 2, p. 48.

–Tyler Cowen, “Last Man Standing,” Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2009, Vol. 33, No. 2, p. 55.

–Arthur Herman, “The Pessimist Persuasion,” Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2009, Vol. 33, No. 2, p. 59.

–G. John Ikenberry, “The Rise of China and the Future of the West,” Foreign Affairs, January/February

2008, Vol. 87, No. 1, p. 23.

–Michael Lind, “Beyond American Hegemony,” National Interest, May/June 2007, No. 89, p. 9.

–Wilson Quarterly, “Decline or Renewal?,” issue, Spring 2009, Vol. 33, No. 2.

–Foreign Affairs, “China’s Grand Map” issue, May/June 2010, Vol. 89, No. 3.

–Foreign Affairs, “Changing China” issue, January/February 2008, Vol. 87, No. 1.

– Journal of International Affairs, “Africa in the 21st Century” issue, Spring/Summer 2009, Vol. 62, No.

2.

–Washington Quarterly, “India Rising” issue, Summer 2007, Vol. 30, No. 3.

–Washington Quarterly, “Resurgent Russia” issue, Spring 2007, Vol. 30, No. 2.

–National Interest, “Asia Rising” issue, May/June 2007, No. 89.

[17] Closer to home, the troubled U.S. newspaper industry – essential to free-market democracies –

ignored warnings for years that younger readers were fleeing print for the digital media. In the early

1990s, I noticed that Stanford University students had quickly abandoned newspapers for the Internet.

Whenever I told editors that our smokestack industry one day would have to go all-digital to survive, they

looked at me as if I was crazy. Amazingly, a recent report found that the newspaper field still “has not yet

moved very far down the road toward a business model to replace the once-thriving legacy model.” (See:

Tom Rosenstiel; Mark Jurkowitz; and Hong Ji, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in

Journalism, “The Search for a New Business Model: How Newspapers are Faring Trying to Build Digital

Revenue,” March 5, 2012.)

On the upside, many believe that we’re entering a golden age of media. (See: Harvard University’s

Nieman Journalism Lab, “Google’s Richard Gingras: We are at the beginning of a journalism

renaissance,” May 16, 2012.) More forward-thinking organizations are breaking fresh digital ground.

Journalism schools are training students in multimedia and business skills and tools. Meanwhile, the

digital revolution is sweeping the $100 billion global book industry, as e-commerce king Amazon, tech

giant Apple, traditional publishers, retailer Barnes & Noble, independent booksellers, and indie authors

change the old publishing model, hopefully for the better. (See: PricewaterhouseCoopers report, “Turning

the Page: The Future of eBooks,” 2010.)

[18] Nearly 20 of my family members and relatives were interned during World War II at Manzanar, a

U.S. military camp in the Mojave Desert of California, even as uncles served honorably in the U.S. Army.

My grandparents and parents lost their general-goods store in downtown Los Angeles, plus a leased five-

acre farm in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles. From the farm, they lost tools and

equipment, home furnishings, many books, a Model T pickup truck, a 1940 Plymouth De Luxe Club

Coupe, and ready-to-harvest onions and carrots valued at $2,600 in 1949, according to a family claim

filed with the U.S. government. See: Masakazu Iwata, Planted in Good Soil: A History of the Issei in

United States Agriculture, Vol. 2 (New York: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 802 – 804.

But how do you measure the much greater loss of future earnings and dreams deferred? Despite the

hardships, my parents, grandparents and 110,000 other Japanese Americans rose above what legal

scholars regard as the worst legal injustice in U.S. constitutional history.

[19] Kenichi Ohmae, The Next Global Stage: Challenges and Opportunities in Our Borderless World

(Upper Saddle River: Wharton School Publishing, 2005).

[20] IBM Institute for Business Value, “Capitalizing on Complexity: Insights from the Global Chief

Executive Officer Study,” 2010.

– Chapter 12: Long Tale of Globalization: More Walls to Fall? –

[184] Jeffry A. Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century (New York: W.W.

Norton, 2006), p. 474.

[185] Niall Ferguson, “An Empire at Risk,” Newsweek and Daily Beast, November 28, 2009.

[186] Ian Bremmer and Nouriel Roubini, “A G-Zero World: The New Economic Club Will Produce

Conflict, Not Cooperation,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2011.

[187] McKinsey & Company, “A new world disorder,” video interview of Ian Bremmer by Rik Kirkland,

March 26, 2009.

[188] Fraser Institute (James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, Joshua Hall, Jean-Pierre Chauffour, Michael D.

Stroup),”Economic Freedom of the World: 2011 Annual Report,” 2011. The average score for nations

rose from 5.5 in 1980 to 6.7 in 2007, but it fell to 6.6 in 2009. The institute defines the cornerstones of

economic freedom as “personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to compete, and security of

privately owned property.”

[189] World Economic Forum (Kristel Van der Elst and Nicholas Davis), Global Risks 2011.

[190] OECD Environment Directorate and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Kumi

Kitamori, Tom Manders, and Rob Dellink), “OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: The Consequences

of Inaction” (OECD Publishing, 2012).

[191] International Energy Agency, “World Energy Outlook 2011,” and Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change, “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters,” November 2011.

[192] Paul Gilding, The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and

the Birth of a New World (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012).

[193] McKinsey Global Institute and McKinsey Sustainability and Resource Productivity Practice,

“Resource Revolution: Meeting the World’s Energy, Materials, Food, and Water Needs,” November,

2011.

[194] Philip Auerswald, The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global

Economy (New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2012).

[195] Joseph Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), p. 24.

[196] Historian Arthur Herman calls pessimistic journalists “purveyors of doom, gloom, and decline . . .

.” See: Arthur Herman, “The Pessimist Persuasion,” Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2009, Vol. 33, No. 2, p. 59.

[197] American writers and philosophers of the 19th century Transcendentalism movement believed in

man’s individual creative spirit and a universal soul that connected all. From Ralph Waldo Emerson’s

essay, “The Over-Soul” (1841): “Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the

universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.”

[198] From “Faint Music” by Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize recipient:

“Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. / When everything broken is broken, / and everything dead

is dead . . . / Maybe then, ordinary light, / faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears.”

[199] OECD report, “Policy Priorities for International Trade and Jobs.” See: Richard Newfarmer and

Monika Sztajerowska, Chapter 1, “Trade and Employment in a Fast-Changing World,” pp. 7 to 73.

[200] For overviews of North Korea’s economy, see:

–John Everard, “The Markets of Pyongyang,” Korea Economic Institute Academic Paper Series, January

2011, Vol. 6, No. 1.

–Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “The MicroEconomics of North-South Korean Cross-Border

Integration,” East-West Center Working Papers, Economics Series, No. 130, June 2012.

–Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Engaging North Korea: The Role of Economic Statecraft,” East-

West Center, Policy Studies 59, 2011.

–Shin Hyon-hee, “North Koreans Increasingly Open to Outside Media,” Korea Herald, June 21, 2012.

–Conference panels “Cracking the Hermit Kingdom” and “Northeast Asia Security Issues,” East-West

Center International Media Conference, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, June 22-23, 2012.

[201] Marc Andreessen, “Report from the Front: Tonight’s Launch of Open Social,” PMarca (an archive

of Marc Andreesen’s blog posts), October 14, 2009.

[202] Sir Tim Berners-Lee, ‘Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality,”

Scientific American, November 22, 2010.

[203] Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the

World (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2008), p. 55.

[204] Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, 2007), p. xxi.

[205] Carmen Van Kerckhove, founder of New Demographic Diversity, teleconference call, January 21,

2009.

[206] Dreyfuss spoke during a media diversity panel at the Online News Association 2011 conference in

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. See also: Benét J. Wilson, “ONA 2011 Saturday Morning Keynote: Race,

Gender and Technology: The Third Rail?,” NABJ Digital Blog, September 26, 2011.

[207] See: Sabrina Tavernise, “New Numbers and Geography for Gay Couples,” New York Times, August

25, 2011, and Edward Iwata, “More marketing aimed at gay consumers: companies covet their buying

power,” USA Today, November 2, 2006.

[208] Years ago, I wrote a business essay on a fictional firm called Nirvana, a corporate Utopia that

boasts “wise and humane management, financial soundness, and a social conscience – a global business

model of the highest order.” At Nirvana, the “most prized asset is human capital” and “walls vanish

between races, genders, cultures.” The response was tremendous from readers and colleagues. See:

Edward Iwata, “Nirvana Corp.: In Search of the Perfect Workplace,” San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle,

August 4, 1996.

[209] Contrary to stereotypes, not all business leaders are heartless, stone-cold capitalists. They’re flesh-

and-blood fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. They’re stewards, philanthropists, social

entrepreneurs. And, like famed billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, many are contributing to the

greater good and leaving a true human legacy.

[210] Martin Luther King Jr., “The Quest for Peace and Justice,” Nobel Prize Lecture, December 11,

1964.

– Chapter 20: The Pi Brothers: Sports Entrepreneurs Bring Mixed Martial Arts to China –

[372] Donovan Craig, “The Next Wave: The Art of War Pulls out all the stops to showcase the growing

phenomenon of MMA in China,” Fight Magazine, July 2009.

[373] Adoria Entertainment Group news release, “Art of War Fighting Championship Makes Nationwide

Debut on Chinese Network Television,” March 7, 2007.

[374] MMAWeekly.com staff, “UFC Announces Chinese TV Deal,” June 29, 2009.

[375] MMAWeekly.com staff, “Art of War Brings MMA to China,” May 22, 2009.

[376] Jad Semaan, “Art of War: The Rise of MMA in China,” NMTV.com, August 8, 2008.

[377] Gregory Brundage, “The Evolution of Modern MMA in China,” Kung Fu Magazine, August 1,

2011.