Friday Digest: From Chicago to Chengdu

While Chicago was jumping with ideas and innovation at our Forum, some big shifts were abound elsewhere in the procurement world.

Spotlight on: Protectionism

This newly-launched feature on www.procurementleaders.com, Spotlight On... takes an in-depth look at big issues of the day and provides our subscribers with some of our best content around these topics. This week, we looked at the EU response to perceived protectionism in other global economies and asked what the implications might be.

News: Huawei barred from Australian broadband project

Speaking of protectionism, there have been some interesting insights this week into how willing governments are to accept bids from companies like Huawei, whom have an extremely strong telecoms offering on their home turf in China, but are struggling to make a bigger dent in key overseas markets, partly due to expressed concerns over the security of their networks.

News: Foxconn investigation heralds change in Chinese working conditions

Meanwhile, the latest instalment in the ongoing saga of working conditions in Apple’s supply chains took an interesting turn. It’s no surprise that Apple would need to respond to the onslaught of allegations, but the recent announcements that the tech giant would be focusing on a number of CSR goals with key supplier Foxconn could do more than simply deflect some bad press. The implications for the sector and for Chinese labour are potentially drastic should the cost of labour go up. We’ll be looking at this more closely next week.

Procurement Leaders Chicago Forum

Finally, a round-up of some of the excellent blogs from our US editor Paul Teague on presentations from the Procurement Leaders Chicago Forum. If you missed out, or even if you were there and wanted to hear Paul’s take on things, it’s definitely worth having a glance at some of these...

PL Forum Chicago: Passion critical for success, panel says

PL Forum Chicago: Business alignment at Kimberly Clark

PL Forum Chicago: TD Bank CPO - getting on the CEO’s agenda

PL Forum Chicago: Notes from J&J and an attractive start

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@andrewbartolini @markperera @psbdelegation @GenexLogistics @prof_outsource @sedexTom

Have a grand weekend.