Guest Column

Meeting the Challenge of Globalization

By John Eger
Apr 21, 2005 

Outsourcing has become a code word for the outflow of American jobs. Not surprisingly, according to a Business Week Magazine special report published recently, manufacturers in the U.S. are having both hardware and software done by companies they contract with worldwide. This they say is not outsourcing. The new word is "collaboration," After all, this is what globalization is all about, they argue.

 Clearly, global corporations have, together with their PR agencies, found a more palatable way of talking about a huge and growing problem for America. But the questions remain, where does it all end, and importantly, what are Americans doing, or going to do, to keep jobs in the U.S.?

To succeed in this new and uncertain economy, we urgently need to fully engage communities across America and reach those in each community with responsibility for education. We need now to nurture the "connected community" -- broadband, 24/7, wired and wireless -- information infrastructures for the 21st century; build those collaboratories to provide the kind of leadership the digital age requires; and above all else, begin promoting the process of enhancing, encouraging and fostering creativity and innovation in all its forms -- in the schools, in the workplace and throughout the community.

Indeed, we are in the early stages of a new era in which creativity and innovation will be the hallmarks of the most successful communities and vibrant economies. Many, like the Nomura Research Institute, argue that the stage is set for the advance of the "Creative Age," a period in which America should once again thrive and prosper because of our tolerance for dissent, respect for individual enterprise, freedom of expression and recognition that innovation is the driving force for the U.S. economy, not mass production of low-value goods and services.

Today, the demand for creativity has outpaced our nation's ability to create enough workers simply to meet our needs. Seven years ago, for example, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers asked the governor of California to "declare a state of emergency" to help Hollywood find digital artists. There were people aplenty who were computer literate, they claimed, but could not draw. In the New Economy, they argued, such talents are vital to all industries dependent on the marriage of computers and telecommunications.

But what makes someone creative? Can the community -- through public art or cultural offerings -- enhance the creativity of its citizens? And if the new economy so desperately demands the creative worker and leader, what do our schools and universities need to do to prepare the next generation of creative people?

In their seminal work, Sparks of Genius, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein reported on a study of 150 eminent scientists, from Pasteur to Einstein, and discovered that nearly all of the great inventors and scientists were also musicians, artists, writers or poets. Galileo, for example, was a poet and literary critic. Einstein was a passionate student of the violin. And Samuel Morse, the father of telecommunications and inventor of the telegraph, was a portrait painter.

At the heart of this effort is recognition of the vital role that art and technology play in enhancing economic development, and ultimately, defining a "creative community" -- one that exploits the vital linkages between art, culture and commerce, and in the process consciously invests in the new information infrastructure, and human and financial resources to prepare its citizens to meet the challenges of the rapidly evolving post-industrial knowledge economy and society.

Those communities placing a premium on building the new information infrastructures, achieving cultural, ethnic and artistic diversity, and reinventing their educational systems -- from preschool through graduate school -- will likely burst with creativity and entrepreneurial fervor. These are the ingredients so essential to developing and attracting the type of bright and creative people that generate new patents and inventions, innovative world-class products and services and the finance and marketing plans to support them. Nothing less will ensure America's dominant economic, social and political position in the 21st century.

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John Eger - Van Deerlin Endowed Chair of Communication and Public Policy at San Diego State University, was advisor on telecommunications policy to Presidents Nixon and Ford. jeger@mail.sdsu.edu