Harvard Business Publishing

I just watched Charlie Rose a few days back - A conversation about leadership at the Harvard Business School centennial celebration, where he interviewed John Doerr, Jeffrey Immelt, James Wolfensohn, Meg Whitman, and Anand Mahindra.

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/10/20/1/a-conversation-about-leadership-at-the-harvard-business-school-centennial-celebration

Your insight is shared by some of the folks above too.

Dear Sir,
A very intersting post on Renovating America's economy.

If you look go back and look to the old American who build America in the second half of the 19th and 1st half of the 20th centuries.

It was Henry Ford in Auto Business, Andrew Carnegie in Steel Business, Rockefeller in Oil, and J.P.Morgan in Financial services, apart from the two technical mavericks who went to business in later years were Alex Graham Bell and Tom Edison.

These gentlemen were either entrepreneur or great technical genius.

America was build with the unique combination of knowledge, application of knowledge in technology and last but the least entrepreneurship.

The bigger question “ Is the American Business and Economic hegemony and supremacy is coming to an end?”

America has to adapt to the fast changing world, the epicenter of capitalism may shift from U.S to Asia, but still America plays a very important role.

The American MNCs with superior management and technological capabilities can manage the innovation and cost and regain the world market.

It is the unique supply chain model both in good and services, which will be outsourced globally to make this happen.

With the BRIC economies are developing very fast, the proper investment decisions have to be taken to exploit these market.

Competition will be fierce the Darwinian Law will be applicable in a more rigid way tomorrow. China in particular will play a predominant role in the world economy and a major threat and competitor to U.S.

It’s true due to the revolution in digital and networking technology the world is becoming very small and jobs from America are flying to China and India.

http://debashishbramha.blogspot.com/2008/10/chinas-role-in-global-economy.html

The labor arbitrage in the global market both in manufacturing and services are playing an important role for America’s economic policy.

Tomorrow’s business worlds will be like this:
1)Neo Classical Entrepreneurship will be in America.
2)Superior R & D will be in U.S. with the human capital both in-house and outsourced.
3)The manufacturing base will be in China.
4)The back end (BPO & KPO) will be India.

America’s core strength is in entrepreneurship, technology and application of technology in management, and general management and economic policy. It’s hard to find a Gates, Jobs, Larry, Serge or Dell in Europe or in Asia. America still has the largest no of Technological Patents with them.

You are absolutely right when you said about building human capital; a country’s progress can only be measured by looking at quality human capital that it can produce.
Post WW-II world has learned the lesson from Japan, then in the 80’s and 90’s from China.

With Warm Regards,
Debashish Bramha.

I tracked back to your post. You're right on Tom, but I'd propose that the best direction for the American economy is value-driven over consumer or producer-driven. I'm going to expand more on the post; like you said, fleshing out these ideas require more than a blog post, but I like where you are beginning the conversation and hope to see more of your ideas. --J Martin

Tom, remember the Houston scene from the movie Apollo 13...the one where they dump out odds and ends from a cardboard box and say that the only way to save the crew is to figure out how to make a square filter fit a round hole?

Perhaps we can renovate our economy by doing more with what we've got. Perhaps we can accelerate problem-solving and innovation by taking existing "parts" from various silos and connecting them in new ways. Often, top thinkers in one silo or sector are unaware of resources and solutions in another, so they reinvent parts of the wheel.

IT could expedite this, right? The gain in speed and efficiency and the reduction in cost could be substantial.

Mark Tomizawa

The US is the biggest consumer market in the world. We buy what other countries make. Becoming a producer economy is not going to happen quickly and will take years in the making. What do we do in the meantime? It would be nice to spend more time at the beach, but how will the average worker pay for it in the short term?

Hello to Mr.Thomas H.Davenport:

You have some interesting ideas regarding consumption in the American economy.

There is one thing here, we are moving into a service economy, no doubt about it, but we still need some manufactures to survive, like the 3 big cars manufactures, this may ignite all the business around them from another industries which depend on the 3 cars manufactures. Many business will come back if the 3 cars manufactures are back on track, that will increase spending all around the American economy.

Mr. Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, said something a few days back that seems to me interesting, like always. He told to the next President Mr. Obama to spend more.

Why?, the only way to wake-up the risk-taking behavior in our consumers is if they have enough money at hand, cash or credit, to spend and not be afraid of running out of money to pay other things like food, gas for the car, new clothes, go out to dinner,etc,a new car, pay our tuition for college to our sons,etc.

This is a situation that started before Mr.Bush became the President of the U.S. but the fear to invest have being growing up since, instead of going down.

The risk-taking decisions fear can only be controlled by handling the consumer purchasing power.Lower gas prices at the pump may increase our spending power, the money going to the gas stations before can be now part of an increase in our consumers budget.

We may want to be produce-driven but if there is no money to buy what we produce there is not an economic surge. That's why Mr. Bill Gates wants more spending from the Federal Government. More spending will put much more purchasing power in consumers hands, who will feel better to buy or/and invest in the economy which will create more jobs,more salaries and more investments.

I don't pretend to have the whole truth in my hands.I don't think my decisions are the best. What I'm trying to do is to pinpoint those areas of the economy where more money can be spend and increase bying and/or investing that will create more employment and more demand from producers.The supply of money may play a critical role in a potential "renaissance" of our market-economy.

Our responsibilty will be taking into consideration in this tough times in every decision we make and those who don't care about the U.S. economy crisis will have to be prosecute.

We, Americans and relatives from Americans citizens, are resilients enough to bring this sheep in to the shore once again, some things will have to change. No panic,we will work this out together and our country will keep shining one more time.

God Bless America!

Sincerely,

Julio R.Gonzalez Jr.