Our first "real" day in Turkey and our first meetings with businesses. After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we headed off by bus to the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce. Juliana and I were the "captains" for the day, which meant we had to keep the group organized, help get them from place to place, and make sure nobody got lost. We almost succeeded with that task! (See below re: dinner)
The Chamber of Commerce is in a beautiful building right on the Bosphorus River. There were metal detectors at the entrance (as we'd later discover, this is pretty common) and almost immediately they took us up the elevator to the rooftop patio which has amazing views of both the Bosphorus and a nearby mosque. The chamber was founded in 1882 and has about 350,000 members. Our presenter pretty much outlined the economic state of Turkey. I was surprised to learn that Turkey is the 6th largest economy in the EU and about 16th worldwide (very similar in size to Australia.) Inflation used to be a massive problem in Turkey, hovering around 70% (and interest rates were similarly high, paying about 75%!) But they've gotten this under control now with a conservative monetary policy and inflation is now around 8%. One problem for Turkey, like the US, is that they import much more than they export. Another big issue for Turkey is the high unemployment rate.
The Chamber of Commerce was a great host, providing tea and cookies after our lecture. This also gave us a chance to mingle with our presenter. Although some of the team was more interested in mingling with the two Turkish girls who helped host the event.
We piled back into the bus (which luckily was air conditioned) and went just a short drive over to the Chamber of Shipping. This department is responsible for anything shipped by sea. (Air and ground freight are not included.) As you'd expect, their building is located directly on the water. The chamber of shipping wasn't established until recently in 1982, which I thought was weird considering that shipping by sea is one of the oldest forms of transportation. Any company in Turkey that deals with shipping must be a member of this chamber. The Turkish merchant shipping fleet is about the 15th largest in the world, which explains why we're seeing so many boats. About 85% of the imports and exports to Turkey are done by boat.
Turkey also has a big shipbuilding industry and the Maltese Falcon, the largest and most technologically advanced sailboat in the world, was built here! Note: it's currently for sale if you have $70 million laying around burning a hole in your pocket.
The biggest challenges to the Turkish shipping industry are: reduced freight rates, shipbuilding competition with China, China stopping shipping coal, and Russia stopping shipping grain. About 30% of Turkey's shipping goes through the Suez Canal.
Since the Bosphorus is pretty narrow, boats can travel through the strait in one direction during the day and the other direction during the night. This reduces accidents.
After the Chamber of Shipping we went to Garanti bank for lunch and afternoon lectures. They have an archeticturally interesting building in Istanbul and out front when we arrived was a guard holding a standard MP5 sub-machine gun. This actually was a pretty common sight because even later that night we saw the police in Taksim Square carrying similar weapons, even though the place seems completely safe. I think this just seems foreign to Americans because we aren't used to seeing heavily armed police like the rest of the world uses.
Garanti bank reminded me a lot of where I work (Google) except that being a bank, people were dressed nicely in suits. They have a fairly young workforce and their own cafeteria where we ate lunch. We ate then headed to a large auditorium to learn about their business. We covered a lot of material so I won't repeat it all here, but the most interesting thing to me was their market segmentation efforts. The do almost textbook segmentation of their customers based primarily on customer needs (Dr. Montermosso would be happy with this.) They segment by needs but correlate these to observable characteristics like revenue or loan amounts. The segmentation drives a lot of their product innovation. I also asked them about how they've built a culture of innovation, which is something we discuss a lot at Google. One way they do this (in addition to segmentation) is to collect product ideas from employees as part of their "You Recommend" program. Employees receive an incentive or bonus if their idea is implemented.
That night we went back to the hotel and had a little downtime before a group dinner at Haci Baba. This is where I screwed up as day captain and accidently left someone back at the hotel (who was sleeping in her room.) We noticed she was missing almost immediately after leaving, so we went back and left a note for her. Food at dinner was good and rather than use a menu they brought out a whole bunch of sample dishes and asked us which we wanted.
Despite being pretty tired, we went out for some beers after dinner. Nothing fancy and I headed back to the hotel early with Harsha. The second day is usually when the jet-lag hits the worst and we definitely felt it during the lectures at Garanti bank. A few others stayed out much later, but I was happy to get a good night's sleep.
0 comments:
Post a Comment