Actividad de aprendizaje 2

Evidencia 2: Workshop “Products and services”

La lectura es una de las habilidades más utilizadas en el mundo, pero a la vez es la

menos motivante, dado que en ocasiones hay textos muy extensos y con vocabulario
complejo que dificulta su comprensión y le resta interés al texto; afortunadamente
existen nuevos métodos que facilitan obtener la información necesaria y con ello
aumentar el léxico personal.

En este orden de ideas y con la finalidad de cumplir con el propósito de esta evidencia,
consulte el material complementario denominado Integration of products and
services.

Luego de esta consulta, resuelva el siguiente taller sobre comprensión lectora:

1. Find the main idea of paragraphs 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, and 12, and write them in a
paragraph.

PARAGRAPH ONE

Three factors combine to reshape the foundations of the modern economy. First, the
digital revolution dramatically augments the reach, flexibility and agility of companies,
big and small, creating new economic actors, such as ‘micro-multinationals’: technology-
intensive companies that are born global. Second, international competition draws
millions of new workers and consumers into what is increasingly a ‘race to the top’,
rather than a ‘race to the bottom’, with emerging countries becoming champions of
innovation, engineering ingenuity and skills acquisition. Third, cultural and structural
trends change the nature of socio-economic interactions by transforming people’s
aspirations and preferences, such as the expectation of instant gratification offered by
one-click services or the seamless interoperability between products and electronic
devices.

PARAGRAPH TWO (BLURRING LINES BETWEEN PRODUCTS AND SERVICES)

A pronounced distinction between product and service markets is fictitious: value

creation and innovation increasingly take place at their intersection. Business-related
services are often decisive in making products attractive to the consumer and they
generate most of the value added in growth and employment.
PARAGRAPH NINE (THE DIGITAL CAR)

Cars have become computers on wheels. Software is revolutionizing the car industry,
until recently one of the most traditional and hierarchically organized industries in the
world. For example, Tesla – a company founded as recently as 2003 - has shown that
there is no reason why a technology company cannot become a car company, with the
design coming from California, modules being delivered by suppliers from around the
world and the final product being put together in contract factories. Electronics and
automation have become key components of the assembly line.

PARAGRAPH TEN (COMPETITION IN THE HIGHER VALUE-ADDED SEGMENT)

Despite the slowdown of growth in emerging markets, the next decades are likely to be
marked by a continued convergence process. As emerging countries move up the value
chain, they increasingly rival producers and service suppliers from advanced
economies. Instead of developing powerful industrial sectors locally, they can now
leapfrog more advanced economies by adopting the latest technologies and sourcing
products and services globally. As a result, OECD countries’ share in world
manufacturing dropped from 82% in 1990 to 56% in 2013 (Figure 3, p. 4).
Tellingly, China’s 12th Five-Year Plan for 2011-2015 explicitly shifts the focus to R&D
and high-end manufacturing and services. This means that China and Europe will
increasingly compete in the same markets, such as clean energy, aerospace, telecom
equipment or broadband networks. Studies have shown that the complementarity of
European and Chinese export offers has dropped from 85% in 2000 to 65% in 2010,
which means that 35% of exports tended to overlap, compared to only 15% ten years
earlier.5 Intensifying global competition means that competitive advantages are more
fluid than they used to be, requiring dynamic approaches to competitiveness and
productivity.

PARAGRAPH ELEVEN (BEHAVIOURAL AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE)

The rationale of the emerging new economy is greatly influenced by ongoing cultural
and structural shifts, some of which are induced by technology, while others result from
broader societal trends. Their effect is profound, from the changing nature of work and
its growing fluidity to the emergence of a sharing economy. In particular, the consumer
and user perspectives – already central to current economic relations – will become
dominant even in business-to-business transactions.
Products are increasingly tailored to individual consumers’ needs and desires through
processes such as ‘additive manufacturing’. Consumers will move from being objects of
economic exchanges to active agents. This trend is already underway, as exemplified
by the growing importance of ‘prosumers. To illustrate, the energy system is shifting
from a centralised, supplyside approach to a demand-oriented model. New digital
products and technologies are progressively modernising the energy system by easing
the way for a novel nexus between production, transportation, distribution and
consumption. Increasingly, energy will become a service and not just a supplied
commodity, providing new opportunities for energy service providers and aggregators,
and giving life to new digital products, such as smart meters. These developments will
transform the business model of energy utilities, bringing new, innovative and disruptive
companies to the fore.
These three factors – digitisation, globalisation and socio-cultural transformations –
combine to produce a more versatile, creative and interactive economy where value
increasingly lies in the interoperability between products and services. Combining
products and services has become the new normal as design, marketing, insurance and
after-sale servicing are inseparable parts of the offering that the consumer demands and
expects. As a result, manufacturing firms have incorporated strong service components
into the way they operate while services firms have sought to benefit from economies of
scale, traditionally more characteristic of the manufacturing world. Business models that
contribute to the integration of products and services are increasingly crucial for
competitiveness and productivity.

PARAGRAPH TWELVE (FROM STATIC TO INTERACTIVE

The fusion of product and service markets will continue to have a profound impact. The
world economy will move from static products and services to smart and interactive
ones. This means that new ways need to be explored with respect to the design and
labelling of products. Products are becoming ‘smarter’, more capable of autonomously
addressing and responding to evolving consumers’ needs.
‘Smart’ coffee machines, for example, have built-in sensors that automatically signal to
the local brand store the need for repair. The user therefore does not only purchase a
product a coffee machine – but also a service, the promise of maintenance whenever
necessary.

2. Write a summary of ten lines from the text.

The modern economy is having substantial changes in many aspects, digital evolution
has drastically increased the scope, flexibility and agility of small and large companies.
Technology is transforming the way we interact and communicate by putting new skills
at hand for each situation.

The products and services in the market must be attractive for the consumer and
generate the majority of the added value in growth and employment. New technologies
allow the creation of different tools, through innovation it is now possible to mangle
mobile phones from a computer. Technology plays an important role in the development
of small and large companies in the future.
3. Choose a paragraph and translate it with your own words.

Three factors combine to reshape the foundations of the modern economy. First, the
digital revolution dramatically augments the reach, flexibility and agility of companies,
big and small, creating new economic actors, such as ‘micro-multinationals’: technology-
intensive companies that are born global. Second, international competition draws
millions of new workers and consumers into what is increasingly a ‘race to the top’,
rather than a ‘race to the bottom’, with emerging countries becoming champions of
innovation, engineering ingenuity and skills acquisition. Third, cultural and structural
trends change the nature of socio-economic interactions by transforming people’s
aspirations and preferences, such as the expectation of instant gratification offered by
one-click services or the seamless interoperability between products and electronic
devices.

Tres factores se combinan para remodelar los cimientos de la economía moderna. En

primer lugar, la revolución digital aumenta drásticamente el alcance, la flexibilidad y la
agilidad de las empresas, grandes y pequeñas, creando nuevos actores económicos,
como las "microempresas multinacionales": empresas intensivas en tecnología que
nacen globales. En segundo lugar, la competencia internacional atrae a millones de
nuevos trabajadores y consumidores a lo que cada vez es más una "carrera hacia la
cima" que una "carrera hacia abajo", y los países emergentes se convierten en
campeones de la innovación, el ingenio ingenieril y la adquisición de habilidades. En
tercer lugar, las tendencias culturales y estructurales cambian la naturaleza de las
interacciones socioeconómicas al transformar las aspiraciones y preferencias de las
personas, como la expectativa de gratificación instantánea ofrecida por los servicios de
un solo clic o la interoperabilidad perfecta entre productos y dispositivos electrónicos.

4. Choose ten words from the text and organize them alphabetically. Look for the
meaning of each word.

 CONSUMERS: Consumidores.
 DRAMATICALLY: Dramáticamente.
 EMERGING: Emergentes.
 INTEROPEBILITY: Interoperabilidad.
 OFFERED: Ofrecido.
 SUCH: Tal.
 SEAMLESS: Sin costura.
 TRENDS: Tendencias
 THE REACH: El alcance
 RATHER: Más bien
5. Match the term with the corresponding meaning.

a Client d Things created by projects.

b Solution c A series of tasks to be done in a specified sequence.
c Engagement a A customer.
d Project b Products and services that solve a client’s problem.
e Deliverable e An agreement between client-service provider.

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