Economic Growth?
21st century economies will be powered by smart growth. Not all growth is created equal. Some kinds of growth are more valuable than others. Where dumb growth is unsustainable, unfair, and brittle, smart growth is sustainable, equitable, and resilient.
-Umair Haque on HarvardBusiness.org
I’m glad someone else is talking about this. I mean, besides my paranoid, raving tirades on Porch Night en Studio (Hi guys!).
The Problem Is…
The ingrained business culture in America is based on rules for a system that hasn’t existed for a long time. We manufacture very little, outsource a lot, subsidize too much, and send (for all practical purposes) all our raw materials overseas.
As long as this makes financial sense it will happen, but that doesn’t mean it is good for our economy in the long-term. We’ll soon have “too many chiefs” as they say; if we eliminate the domestic intellectual, creative, and skilled-worker “classes” who will be left to afford college, go out to eat, and buy the things we manufacture and ship back from Taiwan? There is a limit to this growth that in my mind is approaching faster than we think.
The Solution Is…
We can change direction, restructure large segments of our economy, or realize too late that we were being short sighted and foolish. I personally think the last option is the most likely.
The Reality Is…
Culture, regulation, and “mindsets” are always years behind fundamental changes in the way we do things. Just as the average American harkens all civic and scientific knowledge back to primary education, despite intermediate progress in those fields, the average business person harkens business understanding and operations back to their “formative” years in business. Changing ingrained knowledge, understanding, and practice is very hard. This a phenomenon I call “Being a Human.”