“Times of crisis have always been times for great opportunity,” Bertelsmann Foundation Director Annette Heuser reminds the panel before leading a discussion on innovation and development among the United States and BRIC nations.
How can America utilize the experience gained from enduring a recession to best co-evolve with the developing world and cultivate a domestic environment of accelerated innovation?
Each BRIC country faces unique challenges. China is desperately focused on bringing home its talent, as they are looking at an aging population. Consequently it has developed a ten-year plan to lure native Chinese back into the country after they have received an education. While the last wave of globalization we experienced was financial, claims Chinese Ministry of Commerce member Wang Huiyao, the next will be a mass-movement of the talent.
Brazil, on the other hand, needs to keep up with tremendous growth projections by investing now in the already-insufficient infrastructure. To do this effectively, the private sector needs to be fully engaged and in direct communication with the Brazilian government. Panelist Carlos Ivan Leal, President of the Fundação Getulio Vargas Company, suggests that the only way to expedite this governmental investment is to improve efficiency along every step of the way—with paperwork, regulatory framework, taxes, etc. When these processes are inefficient, Leal states it wastes money that could have been invested in development.
With development occurring so quickly in BRIC nations and cultivating these hotbeds of technological innovation, will the United States be able keep up? President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Shirley Ann Jackson claims the economic crisis prepared the U.S. to successfully compete, because “in a recession, you innovate or you die. Those who were able to adapt are still standing, and that shows that they are capable of evolving. Now it is our job to create an innovation ecosystem for this new talent to thrive in.”
An “innovation ecosystem,” according to Jackson, is the combination of government, academia, and business human resources to create an environment that permits people to fail in the name of innovation without having the crippling pressure of producing results for investors 100% of the time.
“In our country,” says Jackson, “we have become addicted to this idea that there is a silver bullet for every problem, and consequently we have a tendency to dwell on the failures. We have to get back to remembering that failures are inevitable and ultimately constructive.”
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Cooperating With BRIC Markets After Economic Recovery
April 15, 2011
“Times of crisis have always been times for great opportunity,” Bertelsmann Foundation Director Annette Heuser reminds the panel before leading a discussion on innovation and development among the United States and BRIC nations.
How can America utilize the experience gained from enduring a recession to best co-evolve with the developing world and cultivate a domestic environment of accelerated innovation?
Each BRIC country faces unique challenges. China is desperately focused on bringing home its talent, as they are looking at an aging population. Consequently it has developed a ten-year plan to lure native Chinese back into the country after they have received an education. While the last wave of globalization we experienced was financial, claims Chinese Ministry of Commerce member Wang Huiyao, the next will be a mass-movement of the talent.
Brazil, on the other hand, needs to keep up with tremendous growth projections by investing now in the already-insufficient infrastructure. To do this effectively, the private sector needs to be fully engaged and in direct communication with the Brazilian government. Panelist Carlos Ivan Leal, President of the Fundação Getulio Vargas Company, suggests that the only way to expedite this governmental investment is to improve efficiency along every step of the way—with paperwork, regulatory framework, taxes, etc. When these processes are inefficient, Leal states it wastes money that could have been invested in development.
With development occurring so quickly in BRIC nations and cultivating these hotbeds of technological innovation, will the United States be able keep up? President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Shirley Ann Jackson claims the economic crisis prepared the U.S. to successfully compete, because “in a recession, you innovate or you die. Those who were able to adapt are still standing, and that shows that they are capable of evolving. Now it is our job to create an innovation ecosystem for this new talent to thrive in.”
An “innovation ecosystem,” according to Jackson, is the combination of government, academia, and business human resources to create an environment that permits people to fail in the name of innovation without having the crippling pressure of producing results for investors 100% of the time.
“In our country,” says Jackson, “we have become addicted to this idea that there is a silver bullet for every problem, and consequently we have a tendency to dwell on the failures. We have to get back to remembering that failures are inevitable and ultimately constructive.”
