We pride ourselves with having our finger on the pulse here at ELP, and after publishing our feature on IP protection in China – part of our ongoing China Sourcing series - it seems the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has been taking note.

According to the BBC, the WTO has launched an investigation – at the behest of the US – into problems relating to piracy in China. The US’s complaints are nothing new - they have been complaining of Beijing’s apparent reluctance to stamp out the sale and export of counterfeit goods for many years - but if the WTO find China has a case to answer then it could cost Chinese business dear.

Although the WTO’s investigation is limited to establishing whether China is taking sufficient moves to stamp out piracy – and our sources suggest recent events in the country have ensured IP protection is now a top priority in Beijing – any adverse findings could take their toll on the already rocky relationship between the two economic super powers.

The fallout from the Mattel case is still being felt, and despite an apology from the US toy giant to Chinese officials over passing the buck to rogue Chinese sub-contractors, the stench of mutual mistrust is permeating the air.

Beijing has already greeted news of the WTO investigation with the sort of enthusiasm reserved for a state funeral and with US trade officials claiming the latest move is designed to "eliminate significant structural deficiencies that give pirates and counterfeiters in China a safe harbour to avoid criminal liability", the next months should make interesting viewing.

As most involved in procurement will tell you, the last few years have undoubtedly signalled the start of a power shift from West to East, but how have the traditional economic powerhouses adapted?

Well, put starkly, according to James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank for a decade up to 2005, they haven’t.

Speaking at a conference in Hong Kong, Wolfensohn told a number of leading figures that despite what he termed a “tectonic shift” in global economic power and influence, countries like India and China were still treated with a sort of colonial indifference by the US and their Western counterparts.

All of which, he believes, could spell trouble in an economic world that will see China become the globe’s richest country by 2040, closely followed by India.

“The leadership in the developed world, and the people who should know better, still have not adjusted to the fact that this is not just a modest change in global economic power and influence, but a tectonic shift,” Wolfensohn warned.

He added that the steps taken to address the change were “relatively trivial”.

Wolfensohn used his speech as a call to Western companies to do more to understand the cultural and economic drivers that are turning India and China into the powerhouses of tomorrow. But despite the growing taste for low cost country sourcing and global supply chains (leaning heavily on emerging economies), he said there was still precious little evidence of businesses pushing staff to learn the languages used in the countries around which many firms now rely so heavily upon.

So are alarm bells ringing? Well if they are I can’t hear them.

One rather suspects that his comments will be noted and business leaders will do well to keep them in mind. After all, in the fast-paced world of modern business, and given the changes we’ve seen since the start of the millennium, 2040 is not too far off.

The silk road is one of the most famous trade routes in history, and the globalisation of supply chains looks set to play a part in its re-birth.

Earlier this week China, and seven of its near neighbours, agreed, in principle, to build a modern-day equivalent to cope with the increasing demands placed on suppliers in Central Asia.

And if it’s successful then we can expect to see a marked increase on the current one percent of trade that currently travels along the route between Europe and Asia – a minute proporation of the £500bn (€721bn) worth of trade between the two continents.

The plans are expected to be rubber-stamped at a ministerial meeting in Tajikistan in November and, if they are approved, key figures in the region hope that it will enable the historic silk road to become a viable trade route once again.

“This is a region that is at the geographic centre but has been totally overlooked as a viable overland route by some of the new powerhouses of world trade,” Xianbin Yao, the deputy director-general of the ADB’s central and west Asia department, told reporters.

The plans sound ambitious in the extreme, with the hope that the £9.6bn investment will open up six corridors (combining road and rail services) from China to Europe and from Russia to Southern Asia and the Middle East.

Grand as these plans seem, no-one should be getting too excited just yet. The investment in road and rail infrastructure in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, isn’t expected to be completed until 2018.

And whether it’s completed at all must be up for debate. After all, the last project seen on this scale floundered after EU member states dithered for years over the best way of allocating £13.6bn (€20bn) for 30 trans-European networks.

Private investment in Web 2.0 is soaring as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists look to cash in on the increasing popularity of social networking sites.

According to figures compiled by Dow Jones, VentureOne and Ernst & Young, more than $50m was ploughed into Web 2.0 companies in Europe in the first half of this year.

The rise comes as corporate users increasingly look to take advantage of the new technologies to develop their own businesses.

However, despite a big rise in both Europe and countries such as Israel and China, investment in Web 2.0 in the US dropped to $357m, an indication that, according to the Financial Times,  big investors such as Benchmark Capital and Kleiner Perkinds Caufield & Byers were unwilling to increase their exposure.

Although the influx of cash has been likened to first wave of “dotcom” investing, private investment in Web 2.0 remains at far lower levels than those seen at the peak of the dotcom boom – when venture capitalists pushed investment above $100bn.

Ever wondered how current economic instability and the rapid growth of emerging markets was effecting M&A activity in Europe? Well wonder no more, because mergermarket’s Heat Chart provides an accurate barometer of what movement (or not) we can expect to see over the next few months.

The H1 2007 mergermarket Heat Chart, uses press reports, company statements and the company’s own proprietary intelligence, to produce a strategic indicator of future M&A activity. And this year’s findings offer a fascinating insight into the effect that current business trends are having on a fragmented market.

According to the latest figures, the UK continues to lead it’s European neighbours in M&A activity, a fact attributed to its “high levels of transparency and certainty, low barriers to entry and a long-established culture of deal-making.”

Elsewhere, the emergence of India as an economic powerhouse, and the increasing popularity of both Central and Eastern Europe as a location for offshoring is driving strong M&A growth as companies look to consolidation as a means of securing their competitiveness.

The growth seen in areas such as Russia and Central and Eastern Europe is also creating a strong demand for inbound M&A, although the figures indicate that the relatively complexity of completing deals in these areas dictates that only a small number of deals have found their way into an ‘Announced Deal Heat Chart’ dominated by the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

However, whilst mergermarket’s research suggests that when it comes to M&A, Europe’s more mature markets still have significantly higher conversion rates, increasing levels of interest and investment from a diverse range of international players suggest that it won’t be long before Russia, Central, Eastern and Southern Europe begin to close the gap.

Britain’s supermarkets are never slow in promoting their green policies, but a row appears to be brewing over how, what Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy recently referred to as “a revolution in green consumption”, can be achieved.

Last week Leahy admitted that Tesco were ready to raise prices to deliver the real green deal. Shortly after Andy Bond, Leahy’s counterpart at Asda, was busy telling Guardian readers that implementing a more corporately responsible approach did not mean price hikes for consumers.

“The environment is absolutely fundamental, but we think it will actually save money,” Bond said. “I don’t get why prices will have to go up. We won’t be supporting any campaign to drive prices up…….you won’t hear me in the media saying let’s raise prices.”

This thinly veiled swipe at his great rival was surely enough to have the Tesco supreme choking on his organically farmed salmon fillet, but Bond, who has recently come in for criticism over Asda’s approach to suppliers, apparently has bigger fish to fry.

His company’s approach to low-cost food appears to have been backed up by recent market research which shows that the fastest growing food stores are Lidl and Aldi, with data provided by TNS Worldpanel, showing that their sales are growing at twice the rate of their more established competitors.

Asda’s cut-price fashion label, George, has also come under scrutiny after a series of high profile investigations raised questions over working conditions in the company’s factories in the Far East and Indian Subcontinent.

In typically forthright fashion, Bond emphasised his commitment to responsible sourcing. “We do 15,000 audits every year (of suppliers). Can I tell you every day in every factory what is going on? Of course I can't,” Bond said. “But I personally want nothing to do with unethical practices. And we will only help nations like Bangladesh by trading with them."

The gloves, it seems, are off and with Bond and Leahy leading their troops it seems that the CSR battle will run and run.

Fellow ELP blogger Tim Minahan has recently highlighted some interesting research concerning contract management and its associated problems over on his Supply Excellence blog.

He points to the findings of a recent study by the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM), which claims that despite many businesses increased focus on contract visibility and risk mitigation, the age-old issues still persist.

According to the Contract Management Software: Market Sizing and Status Report, “…contract management remains one of the most manual, under-systemised” and ill-defined areas of business operations.

“In most business and public sector organizations, contract management remains one of the last undefined areas of activity,” says Tim Cummins, the report’s author and IACCM President and CEO.

“While there are certainly rules, policies, and authorities related to the form, content and creation of contracts — and there may even be resources operating with job titles like ‘contract manager,’ this does not represent a process with clear ownership or accountability for performance.”

On the up side, as Minahan rightly points out, the research does, however, reaffirm the view that using contract management software can have a beneficial impact when it comes to addressing the key problems associated with this troublesome area.

The research suggests that organisations utilising contract management software reported positive improvements with contracting and contract management control, alongside increased efficiency and effectiveness across the board.

With geographical boundaries becoming increasingly blurred in modern-day business, a new study claims that when it comes to productivity American workers are leading the way.

According to a new report by the United Nations, workers from the US stay longer in the office than their European counterparts, and are only surpassed by the Norwegians when it comes to getting more done in an hour.

The figures, which are derived from dividing the country’s gross domestic product by the number of people employed, found that the average US worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, leaving them streets ahead of their nearest rivals Ireland ($55,986), and Luxembourg ($55,641).

Belgium ($55,235) and France ($54,609) came in fourth and fifth respectively.

The report claims that those busy workers in the US also beat every EU member state when it came to generating the most output per working hour, although their $35.63 an hour was bettered by Norway ’s $37.99.

The figures represent a severe fall from grace by workers in France , who between 1994 and 2003, topped the efforts of those across the pond by over a dollar more on average.

Unsurprisingly, the UN study found that workers in Asia worked the largest number of annual hours. In seven countries – South Korea, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and Thailand – workers yearly hours topped 2,200.

However, whilst productivity in many of the region’s economies was still lagging behind, the advent of offshoring has led to China and East Asian countries catching up quickly with their Western counterparts, with the figures suggesting that productivity in the region had doubled in the past decade and is accelerating at a greater rate than anywhere else in the world.

That said, with workers in East Asia still only one-fifth as productive as those in industrialised countries, it’s little wonder that the US is still one of the first ports of call for some of the world’s most successful companies.

Devising a coherent supply chain strategy may be taxing the minds of many procurement executives, but many are still struggling to achieve their aims. Not my words, but those of Stanley Fewcett and Gregory Magnan, the authors of a recently published CAPS Research Focus Study, ‘Achieving World-Class Supply Chain Collaboration: Managing the Transformation’.

According to their research, managers are spending more time than ever before evaluating supply chain-enabled business models. Despite this Fawcett and Magnan claim that only a handful of companies have developed fully integrated collaborative capability, whilst for the majority supply chain collaboration remains “ad hoc” and “fragmented”.

And the report’s authors warn that those companies who are failing to develop their supply chain strategy are in danger of being left behind by the competition.

But fear not, the authors have taken the time to provide a three-step process to highlight the benefits of companies pursuing a collaborative supply chain approach.

These are; introspection – the way companies view and interact with their customers and their systems thinking orientation; Supply chain design – which is a five stage process incorporating scanning, mapping, costing, competency/outsourcing management and rationalisation; and Supply chain collaboration – which refers to the methods used to drive the transformation, including relationship alignment, information sharing, performance measurement, people empowerment and collaborative learning.

Fawcett and Magnan have used their data to compile a supply chain collaboration benchmarking diagnostic, and if their findings are anything to go by, it’s going to prove a very useful tool indeed.