Automobiles and The New Sputnik Moment - Will America Leverage its Intellectual Capital?
April 2, 2009 by Mary Adams
One of the lead stories in this morning’s New York Times announces that:
Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.
This comes at a moment when American auto makers are practically on the floor, still breathing due only to government subsidies. Yet I hope that Americans hear this announcement and think, “why not us?”
To me, it feels as momentous as the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Russians a little over 50 years ago. Competition with Russia was the catalyst for John F. Kennedy’s famous speech (at my alma mater Rice University) calling for our country to put a man on the moon. This goal led to many advances in science and business.
We are not at war with China. Quite the contrary. We are depending on their investments in our national debt. But we do need to look at this competitive moment very seriously.
Why is this an intellectual capital moment? Because every big issue from now on in our nation and our globe is going to be more about IC than anything else. The shift from the agricultural economy to the industrial economy did not mean that we stopped producing food–we just learned to produce greater quantities using fewer workers and inputs. As we shift from the industrial to the knowledge economy, we will not stop producing physical products–we will just use fewer workers and inputs to produce them.
The real competitive edge in manufacturing as well as technology and services will come from intellectual capital. IC is almost a magical resource–the right combination of smart people, the right networks, good design and repeatable processes can solve any problem an infinite number of times without lowering your knowledge inventory.
There is room for innovation all over the globe. But we in the U.S. are doing ourselves and everyone in the world a disservice if we squander our most precious natural resource: our intellectual capital.
[...] frustrated that we were not stepping up to global competition. Since then, I have blogged about similar concerns for the automotive industry. I had the same feeling when I read a story yesterday in the New York Times entitled China Far [...]