India Y China Grandes Ciudades

Entrevista a MICHAEL SILVERTEIN

China and India Are an Opportunity, Not a Threat
HBR IdeaCast: An interview with Michael Silverstein, cofounder of The Boston Consulting Group's global consumer practice and coauthor of The $10 Trillion Prize: Captivating the Newly Affluent in China and India.

Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2012/09/china-and-india-are-an-opportu.html (Play Podcast upto 6:55) TRANSCRIPT SARAH GREEN: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green. I'm here today with Michael Silverstein of BCG. He's one of the founders of Boston Consulting Group's global consumer practice, and he's co-author of The $10 Trillion Prize. Michael, thanks for joining us today. MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN: Thank you. SARAH GREEN: So Michael, I'd like to start withthat provocative title. What is the $10 trillion prize, and how did you come up with that nice round number? MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN: We were doing research about the development of the Chinese and Indian market. And one of the base pieces of research is a forecast of demand. And lo and behold, if you look at the consumer markets that are growing at roughly 8% per year in China and India and you layout consumer consumption, in 2020 the combination of China and India equals a $10 trillion dollar consumer business. SARAH GREEN: Wow. So I want to just ask one question about that before we really dive in, about grouping China and India together that way. And I know that at HBR and in a lot of business publications we tend to do that, even though they're really very different countries. Why do wedo that, and what is the usefulness of fusing them together in that way? MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN: They are the two fastest growing markets in the world. They are the two most populous countries in the world. They have completely different development models. But if you put them in one book, if you put them in one container, it is the two biggest opportunities for global companies in the world, in thehistory of man.



Both markets are experiencing unprecedented growth. Indians are growing their per capita income from $1,000 to $4,000. Chinese are growing their incomes from $4,000 to $12,000. This book is about the time period from now till 2020. Between 2020 and 2050, it's not clear which one, India or China, ends up on top. SARAH GREEN: That's interesting. OK. So I'd like to start withChina, and then we'll move on to India. And I'd like you to paint the picture for us of what's going on in China. I know there was one really startling number that really grabbed me that a Chinese person born in 2009 will spend 38 times as much as their grandparents did. And as a Westerner, it's almost hard to imagine that rate of growth. So take us there. What's going on? MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN: Ifyou were a Chinese person born in 1960-- and I met and talked with a lot of Chinese people born in 1960-- life expectancy was 47 years. If you jump forward to a baby born in 2009, life expectancy is 73 years. That is a staggering difference. The China person born in 1960 lived on $100 a year. The China person born in 2009 has $1,429 in spending per capita. The lifetime consumption for the 1960-bornChina person is $16,400. The lifetime consumption for the 2009 China-born is $632,000. The difference is 38x. It has to do with health care, education, job classification, earnings potential, moving from being subsistence rural agriculture to being urban middle class, buying packaged food, buying health care services, buying housing, housing that has cement and steel and corn and copper builtinto the house. SARAH GREEN: So when you talk about some of those shifts there, I think as a Western person it's easy for me to say, oh, they're becoming more like us, they're becoming more like me. Is that what's happening? Or are they finding their own path to prosperity. MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN: They are very attuned to Western culture. If you go to China and you go to Shanghai or Beijing or any of...