“Tom Friedman, in his bestseller The World is Flat: a brief history of the 21st century describes a world in which decreasing trade barriers and rapid advances in technology, especially communication technology, have led to a revolutionary globalization of industry. In this new world, corporations create global supply chains for services and manufacturing by searching out the best providers wherever they may be. Companies in China, India, Brazil and Indonesia are now able to compete on a level playing field with American companies for spots in those global supply chains. The world has been flattened.
However, numerous studies show that the global playing field is not, in reality, completely flat. There are geographic areas where particular types of activities can be carried out with unusual efficiency and creativity. These are areas that John Hagel and John Seely Brown called local ecosystems that can amplify capability-building opportunities, that Susanne Berger calls clusters, and Richard Florida calls learning regions or creative centers. Special characteristics of these regions enable them to become centers of creative activity of one type or another. As a consequence, companies located in one of these areas still have a competitive advantage over similar companies not located in such a cluster elsewhere.
For many of these special local ecosystems- but not all - a university provides a center for creativity that plays an important role in producing the special characteristics of the region. Thus the ability of the university to encourage and support creativity is key to its role in such an ecosystem."
This is the beginning of a talk I recently gave at a USC Templeton Lecture entitled The Creative University in a Flat World. The subject of the talk was creativity generally, and the special role that universities that encourage creativity can play in a flattening world.
In this talk, I discussed at length both personal and group creativity, and conditions that are supportive of creative activity. I then looked at some of the special ecosystems of creativity that are appearing around the world, and the role of universities in creating and sustaining those ecosystems.
In this world in which offshoring is moving up the educational ladder, one must ask what the appropriate goals of an education must be such that our graduates have a reasonable opportunity to achieve success. I don't know what the answer to that question is, but creativity and entrepreneural skills would seem to be key to continuing success in such a world in flux. Thus I find the issues of what creativity is and how to encourage it to be very interesting. Similarly, the pressures of globalization seem to be encouraging responsive universities to turn outward towards their communities in order to help create economically healthy local ecosystems in which creative activity flourishes. This also is a very interesting and important subject as one thinks about the future role of universities.
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nice blog and nice read I will forward this info on to a friend that will love it!
Cheers,
http://www.freeroomshare.com
Lloyd responds: Thanks Gary!
Posted by: gary lewis | March 24, 2009 at 09:43 AM
First, Globalization and Free Trade have not evolved in any economic natural way.
Second, Workers have no voice in the process and international organizations like the WTO and the World Bank control the flow of commerce outside of any real democratic process.
Third, Free Trade is not trade as historically practiced and defined. It is based on moving production from place to place based on the cheapest labor markets of the world . The main commodities are actually workers who are being traded on a world block down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor. It is a betrayal of human dignity in the work day.
Fourth, Many are unnetted - outside looking in at the celebration by the Free Traders and Globalists - see - http://www.experiencedesignernetwork.com/archives/000636.html
Fifth, The U.S. Federal Government sponsored the moving of factories outside the USA starting in 1956. This evolved into the Maquiladora factories in Mexico using impoverished workers. Later it evolved into what is called Free Trade.
Summary: Free Trade and Globalization have made a mockery out of the Free Enterprise system with raw Capitalism breeding wars and terrorism.
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Posted by: Tapsearch Com Editor | September 08, 2007 at 01:08 PM