Massimo Fuchs, President & CEO, WorldPoint

Dear Mike,

Hope this finds you well in my beloved and charming Féchy, and that you're hanging in there with running LISA. Enjoyed reading your most recent article and message you're sending across. But in 2002, and beyond, do we really "must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately" to survive? I disagree. Thanks to technology and communication on a global scale, we can now finally afford to all hang differently, but we should nevertheless not loose focus on what we all really hang on to, or should hang on to.

I haven't seen the movie you quoted yet, but the example you used by Nash I believe has one fallacy, a typical one for theoretical economists or mathematicians, for whom the world consists of formulas and equations that always work out, at least in their theoretical world: All four would indeed win, if and only if three of the four would actually unequivocally be willing to live forever with the fact that three won't get the blonde, but only one of them actually will as a result of their strategy. They need to accept that small detail without any grudge and not even an inkling of any jealousy, or they will just sow dissent among each other for later. This is not the law of mathematics or economies, but of human nature. It is also an explanation why communism failed. After all, homo sapiens is a species still classified as hunters, a world where only the strongest wins and survives. If you take away the hope of winning over others, humans tend to become dull and loose interest in economic activity.

It also seems to be missing scenario three, which is that the blonde could actually be a nymphomaniac who might like to end up with all four of them at the same time, or scenario four that she might not like men at all, so fighting over her would be a waste of energy, etc. I could go on with other scenarios that have much more to do with true human nature than with mathematical scenarios. In any event, initial fact finding would give them better clues to the actual challenges, which would then allow a better plan of attack for all four of them.

One of the readily apparent metaphors here for LISA is, based on my own observations at LISA, that many members indeed want and support a cooperation with their competitors to enhance their own chances of success, but then still hold a grudge if one of their partners gets the big desirable client they actually wanted for themselves. This is typically the sign of many fighting over a small pie.

Also, I found that in-depth true fact finding of actual needs of clients and how they would be best served, is still quite limited and myopic. The world is often still looked at from a vendor's perspective, which can be seen in many actual product offerings by LISA vendors. Approaches are entrenched. Many participants still don't seem to recognize the full power of distributed communication networks, or don't apply them correctly.

The fact that clients became members of LISA themselves to be better educated is a clear indication to me that that their expectations were not met so far. The fact that they are upset about sales pitches is a hint to the problem that they first want to understand what they should be pitched and sold on. Many feel they were sold snake oil so far, and now want to find the true cure to their pains.

It's become clear by now that the sheer size of the IT industry and the increased pace of globalization in most developed places around the globe still hasn't ushered in an unequivocal flowering of business in the localization industry world. Industry players have blamed this on everything from the clients' lack of understanding of their sellable assets or services to their clients' inherently non-entrepreneurial or even globalized "mindset." I would propose and argue another reason: it's not that LISA members don't have the assets or services to make their business flourish, or that their clients don't understand that the world today is global. I could point out many examples.

No, the real problem is that localization businesses have yet to establish and normalize the invisible network of real forces that turns truly localized assets from "dead," i.e., mere costs, into "liquid" capital, in short provide their clients with a clear and convincing ROI.

In our current economic system, standardized laws allow us to mortgage a house to raise money for a new venture, permit the worth of a company to be broken up into so many publicly tradable stocks, and make it possible to govern and appraise property with agreed-upon rules that hold across neighborhoods, towns, or regions. In the IT world, one can capitalize on intellectual property through royalties. This invisible infrastructure of standardized and codified "asset management"--so taken for granted in our economy, even though it has only fully existed in the United States for the past 100 years--is the missing ingredient to success within localization. It still seems stuck in the "cost" world. But even though that link is primarily a perceived financial one, I'd argue that the process of making it a normalized and required component of the IT business segment is more a political--or attitude-changing--challenge than anything else.

Every association like LISA needs a clear purpose to survive, beyond the mere altruistic agenda that founded it. I believe that is this attitude-changing mission that would give a real purpose to LISA.

I'd like to supply one possible formula among many to fix the backwardness of some of the nascent or existing localization businesses and the challenges posed to LISA. The first objective would be to unify the many "social contracts" and myriad of frameworks already existing between all the localization industry participants into one, all encompassing social contract and framework, by listening better to the "barking dogs", the clients, and their pains with the current system.

Past attempts with this aim seem to have failed because they have lacked the legitimacy and full support from a majority of the current and true industry participants. LISA needs to create a bridge to fix this dilemma, a bridge that integrates old industry customs into a new all encompassing framework. By working with their clients, industry leaders can forge a new framework that will finally make sense to clients, and alleviate their pains with localization.

The second task is a task of a political nature because the plan outlined above requires the understanding and support of all participants, clients or vendors, the industry elite, and even the translators. The clients will gain the most because they will greatly increase their economic advantage from localization with a more unified system that will enable them to use their assets as fully functioning capital. The industry elite and the translators will harvest gains as well; they will benefit from an expanded market and a growing localization industry size. The industry at large must not stay stuck in its current world, but instead fine-tune its approaches and change it to make it work for all, not just a few. That's usually best achieved through true open standardization.

This, again, would be a worthwhile purpose for a trade association like LISA, don't you agree? You certainly have my continued best wishes to succeed at it.

Massimo Fuchs
President/CEO
WorldPoint
email: mfuchs@worldpoint.com