Episode 28 — How the Shipping Container Relates to Project Management

Tune in to understand why Bill Gates chose The Box as one of his top picks in 2013.  ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● MARC LEVINSON NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our roundtable discussion about what matters most to you, whether you’re a professional project manager or working toward being certified.  We want to be a spark to light your imaginative fire and give you some perspective and encouragement.  And we do that by drawing on the experience of others who are knee deep, and sometimes deeper, in the world of project management. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the experts at this table, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Andy, we’re going to hear from a very special guest today. ANDY CROWE:  We’ve got a great guest this morning.  Marc Levinson’s joining us.  He’s the author of several books, and a really well-known person in the nonfiction world. NICK WALKER:  Dr. Marc Levinson is an economist.  He’s an expert in international trade and globalization, international finance and finance regulation.  He’s written for, among others, Time magazine, Newsweek, Harvard Business Review, the Daily Journal of Commerce in New York, and The Economist in London.  And he’s advised Congress on transportation and industry issues.  He’s a consultant and an author of six books.  Marc, welcome to Manage This. MARC LEVINSON:  Well, thank you very much.  I’m delighted to be with you. NICK WALKER:  Now, Marc, we’re here in Georgia.  And you have a little bit of a Georgia connection, as well. MARC LEVINSON:  I lived in Atlanta for a number of years in the 1970s and early ’80s.  I am a proud alumnus of Georgia State University’s Graduate School.  And so, yes, I do have fond memories of Georgia. ANDY CROWE:  Marc, I’ve got to ask – this is Andy.  What part of town did you live in? MARC LEVINSON:  I lived for a while in Druid Hills and then in Grant Park. ANDY CROWE:  Excellent, excellent.  And my wife also joins you as having done her graduate work at Georgia State.  So got a connection there. NICK WALKER:  All right. MARC LEVINSON:  Very good. NICK WALKER:  One of your most fascinating books is titled “The Box:  How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.”  Now, Marc, I have to admit that for years when I lived in Seattle I would drive by the port and see the loading and the unloading of the container ships.  But not once did I ever think, how does this method of transporting goods affect me?  I think maybe we take for granted something that’s really changed the life of every person who’s bought something manufactured outside this country. MARC LEVINSON:  The shipping container seems like a very mundane product.  It doesn’t seem like anything that particularly needed to be invented or developed.  But in fact, up until the 1950s, it didn’t exist.  And there was a prolonged period of developing containerization, developing standards so that a container could be sent around the world, and then of businesses changing their practices so that they could take advantage of the container.  So the container had very substantial effects on international trade.  It made globalization possible.  And my book is really the story of how this happened. ANDY CROWE:  Marc, this is interesting for me.  This is Andy.  And as I look at this and think about it, I’ve worked in the supply chain world, supply chain logistics.  I’ve done projects, I’ve managed projects for companies that provide this service for large shipping companies.  And it is something we take for granted.  So project managers have to interface with this kind of world a lot, with cartons and containers, cases – cases in, cartons out, all of it going on shipping containers.  Tell us what the world was like before that. MARC LEVINSON:  Sure.  Before the shipping container was developed, most goods were shipped internationally in a form that was referred to as “break...