The World Competitiveness Yearbook 2010 from Swiss business school IMD finds the U.S. and Europe losing their edge to fast-growing Asian economies.
A lot can change in 12 months. At this time last year, Western nations dominated the annual ranking of the world’s most competitive countries prepared by the IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Now, in the most recent ranking released May 19, five of the top 10 are from the Asia-Pacific region. Emerging-power China, ranked No. 18, has gained ground, even as No. 3-ranked U.S. and No. 22-ranked Britain slipped in the global pecking order. Check out the top 10 here.
Microsoft bids to keep its grip on corporate computing against Google’s challenge.
In a significant move, Microsoft announced new, web-based versions of popular applications such as Word and Excel as part of the “Office 2010” release, and unveiled changes designed to make it easier for workers to collaborate using its software. These initiatives come at a critical time in the evolution of corporate computing. After dominating the office desktop for so long, Microsoft now faces a growing challenge from a variety of companies that are betting they can leverage the cloud to erode its share of the market.
Among other things, the new, web-based version of Office will make it much easier for workers to use documents and spreadsheets on a host of different devices, including smart phones. Microsoft has also tweaked its software to make it easier for people to, say, embed videos in PowerPoint presentations and to integrate data from their social networks into online calendars and e-mail services. And the company plans to offer a free, stripped down version of its web apps that will compete directly with Google’s mass-market offering [Source].
A sharp brand certainly helps. Portfolio.com ranked the top 25 brands for small- to mid-sized businesses in the USA. Find here the results.
Furthermore, you can find Portfolio’s special report on branding here. Insightful article are how Singapore branded itself and how Nike is branding itself beyond the swoosh.
Apple is accelerating the rate of acquisitions as the company vies with Google for mobile technologies and talent. Since returning to Apple as CEO in 1997, Jobs has made 13 acquisitions, according to Bloomberg data. Of those, five happened in the past seven months alone.
“The pace has really picked up, there seems to be a strategic shift,” said Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. in New York. “It looks like there’s an acquisition frenzy going on between Google and Apple in the sense that there’s an increasing urgency on Apple’s part to stay even if not ahead of Google in the phone space and apps space.”
Patent filings may provide clues to potential targets. Apple recently sought patent protection for mobile purchasing and touch-screen technology. Even with the new attention to M&A, Apple will maintain its strategy of focusing on smaller companies rather than taking on the risks of integrating large ones into Apple’s culture.
With more than $23.1 billion in cash, Apple has plenty of money to keep purchasing small startups. Counting long-term investments that the company can “liquidate in a day,” Apple had $41.7 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter, Broadpoint’s Marshall said, In comparison, Google had about $26.5 billion, he said [Source 1] [Source 2].
The World Competitiveness Yearbook 2010 from Swiss business school IMD finds the U.S. and Europe losing their edge to fast-growing Asian economies. 
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