The seminar will focus on how HP leverages ?Global Shared Services? to address its cost management issues throughout its operations. It will cover practical issues such as internal office review for deciding how to outsource, how to manage migration, risks as anticipated by HP measured against actual experience. It will evaluate challenges of creating global shared services and how to meet them. It will illustrate how shared services add value to HP and provide metrics on speed, proportion of the work can be offshored. Sanjay Singh is a director of Business Operations for HP?s Business Process Delivery organization. His responsibilities include operations strategy, business development, including alliances, marketing operations as well as quality and operations risk management. Currently, he is the program manager for HP?s BPO initiative. Prior to HP, Sanjay was an engagement manager within Accenture?s Strategy group, where he led and managed a number of projects related to business strategy and market entry into new spaces for clients in the High Technology and Telecommunications industry. His work experience also includes working for IBM Corporation within their PC group.

In the United States since 9/11, there has been a tendency to reduce Southeast Asia's connections to the Middle East to religion: that is, to the Muslim faith shared by majori-ties east of the Mediterranean and south of the South China Sea, not to mention the Muslim minorities elsewhere in Southeast Asia. While addressing the changing nature and importance of this overlap, Professor von der Mehden will also analyze how and why these two regions, spatially so far apart, have been interacting on a range of economic, security, and political issues, including the question of Palestine. He will argue that there is more interaction today between the two regions than ever before. Each region has become more involved in the affairs of the other. But these burgeoning connections are not what they were expected to be. Nor are they all benign.

Fred von der Mehden is internationally known for his extensive scholarship on politics, religion, and development in Southeast Asia. His talk will update and expand on his 1993 book, Two Worlds of Islam: Interaction between Southeast Asia and the Middle East. A senior editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (1995), Professor von der Mehden's many other books include Religion and Modernization in Southeast Asia (1986); Southeast Asia 1930-1970 (1974); Comparative Political Violence (1973); and Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia (1963). He has just returned from Southeast Asia, where he has lectured or done research almost every year since the 1950s. He is California-trained, having earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley; an M.A. from Claremont Graduate School; and a B.A. from the University of the Pacific.

The Global Knowledge Network is a new initiative rooted in one of the most significant technological and economic trends of the past decade, globalization. The Network will study these trends and their effect on Silicon Valley, at the same time leveraging relationships between technology leaders in our Valley and other regions around the globe. The Network will also create a cross-boundary "network of networks" spanning our region's many diverse entrepreneurship organizations. More detailed information about the Global Knowledge Network can be found at http://www.jointventure.org.

The kick-off event will feature a panel addressing Silicon Valley's emerging knowledge networks and the future of IT as well as time for networking. The keynote speaker will be William F. Miller, Co-Director, SPRIE and Professor Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Joining him as panelists on the program will be Simon Cao, founder of both Arasor and Avanex, with 20 years experience in optics and communications and Ajay Shah, who founded of SMART Modular Technologies, and served until recently as President and CEO of the Technology Solutions Business Unit at Solectron.

William F. Miller is the Herbert Hoover Professor Emeritus, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and President Emeritus of SRI International. He also chairs the board of Borland Software Corporation, and has previously sat on the boards of Wells Fargo and the Fireman's Fund. He currently serves on the boards of Sentius Corporation, Data Digest Inc., and Handysoft USA.

Simon (Xiaofan) Cao is Founder, President and CEO of Arasor Corporation, and has twenty years of experience in optics, communications, and signal processing. He was the founder of both Avanex Corporation and Oplink Communications, Inc.

Ajay Shah founded SMART Modular Technologies in 1988. Until recently he served as President and CEO of the Technology Solutions Business Unit at the Solectron Corporation.

Technology product companies are characterized by rapid product introductions and the need to stay ahead in each product generation. If a company stumbles and loses its lead in one generation of product, it can be fatal. Technical support is as important as unique product features to win and retain customers. Yet this function is often an afterthought for many companies. While developmental engineering and product creation are exciting, providing strong support for such products is critical for a company's success in the market place.

With an overall shortage of engineers in the United States, companies can work with specialized, dual-shore based technical support companies to provide this very critical function to customers on an ongoing basis.

Somshankar Das brings twenty-nine years of experience in public and private management, high technology, and venture capital businesses to his role of president and chief executive officer of e4e. Prior to joining e4e, Som was a general partner with Walden International, where he specialized in semiconductor, software, IT service, and Internet infrastructure markets. While at Walden, he created a portfolio of service companies including Mind Tree Consulting, Techspan, Sierra Atlantic and WebEx. He also established the Walden India Nikko Fund in 1996, the first technology focused VC fund in India. Som currently serves on the boards of directors of two public companies, Aztec and WebEx. He has over twelve years of management experience in the U.S. semiconductor industry, and was actively involved in establishing Malaysia's first commercial silicon wafer foundry, Siltera. Prior to joining Walden, he was director for Worldwide Business Development at VLSI Technology, Inc. and was previously an officer in the Indian Administrative Service in India. Som holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and an M.S. in physics and mathematics from Calcutta University.

This seminar is part of SPRIE's Fall 2003 series on "High-Tech Regions and the Globalization of Value Chains."