Musings on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Friday, April 29, 2005The Global Challenge (and Opportunity)
Tom Friedman wrote a great column (registration required) in today's New York Times. He begins by quoting Bill Gates:
Our high schools were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting - even ruining - the lives of millions of Americans every year.
Friedman elaborates on the "the biggest challenge and opportunity facing us today":
...the flattening of the global economic playing field in a way that is allowing more people from more places to compete and collaborate with your kids and mine than ever before...
Meeting this challenge requires a set of big ideas. If you want to grasp some of what is required, check out a smart new book by the strategists John Hagel III and John Seely Brown entitled The Only Sustainable Edge. They argue that comparative advantage today is moving faster than ever from structural factors, like natural resources, to how quickly a country builds its distinctive talents for innovation and entrepreneurship - the only sustainable edge.
Economics is not like war. It can always be win-win. "But some win more than others, " Mr. Hagel said, and today it will be those countries that are best and fastest and building, attracting and holding talent.
There is a real sense of urgency in India and China about "catching up" in talent-building. America, by contrast, has become rather complacent. "People go to Shanghai and Bangalore and they look around and say, "They're still way behind us,'" Mr. Hagel said. "But it's not just about current capabilities. It's about the relative pace and trajectories of capability-building.
We get complacent because we tend to see what is readily visible - physical accumulations and infrastructure. At the scale of a country the size of India or China, the accumulation of physical infrastructure will take time. But, while physical infrastructure remains important, intangibles are what drive the knowledge economy. Furthermore, skilled entrepreneurs know that one does not need to possess resources in order to succeed - one merely needs effective access to strategic resources.
Access is enabled through collaboration. Collaboration is faciliated by socio-technical communication and coordination. Friedman, Hagel, and JSB are right in asserting that these kinds of hidden infrastructures are developing far more quickly than most of us imagine.
A case in point:
Over the last 30 days, Pioneer Entrepreneurs has added members from Canada, Israel, Italy, France, India, Philippines, Brazil, Argentina, China, Poland, Singapore, Belgium, Netherlands, and, yes, the United States. To me, this is a clear indication of how people from across the globe are searching for ways to connect, collaborate, and compete - even through a tertiary nexus based in Bozeman, Montana.
It's exciting and sobering. You see, learning is subject to positive feedback effects, which means the accumulation of capability tends to reflect a classic s-shaped curve:
In such cases, it's dangerous to assume that tomorrow is going to look a lot like today, because today may be the tipping point.
