In the beginning was the idea. The wheel, the world-wide-web – the thought of their possibility is what drove them into existence and their impact on societies has been enormous. Ideas are powerful. They can be fought over, used to drive human development, they can change our ways of living or even our ideas about ourselves and our place in the world.
Author Doris Lessing once talked about the forces that help create societal trends in the sense of there being “an idea around”. It seems like good way to explain how style of thinking or set of beliefs seem to creep into the collective psyche and shape communal aspirations or fears in way that changes how we choose to run our economies and our lives.
So what are the ideas that are around today – the ones big enough to shape future policymaking, business strategy, decision making and life choices? We asked diverse group of leaders in business, science and academia.
A new geopolitical balance
It’s like watching the financial equivalent of tectonic plates shifting as countries like China and India become the new power-houses of the global economy while Europe stagnates and the United States totters under the weight of its own deficit.
In geographic sense, we’re closer to Asia than we are to Britain or the United States – but our cultural ties have historically stretched to embrace the so-called western economies. So the geopolitical power shift is causing both our economic and cultural compasses to quiver uncertainly. As Marilyn Waring, professor of public policy at Massey University notes (see box), it’s hard to get past the idea of China and its growing impact in our lives.
An article in the January ’06 McKinsey Quarterly predicts that Asian GDP (excluding Japan) – which currently accounts for 13 percent of world GDP, and Western Europe – which accounts for more than 30 percent, will nearly converge within the next two decades, says NZIM president Tony Hassed.
“For me, what will shape our future is how we react, or better, become proactive, in taking advantage of this forecast growth in the contribution of Asian GDP to the world GDP. With Asia right on our doorstep, and with the reasonably good relationships we have with the emerging powerhouses of India and China, how can New Zealand develop its GDP on the back of the growth in Asian GDP?
“It’s not just the growth in GDP which is important to consider, but the attendant change in thinking. Outsourcing into Asia is going to become way of life across wide range of manufacturing, IT and services and that will bring with it need to consider what New Zealand does with the labour pool affected by such outsourcing.
“We need to consider closer integration with our Asian neighbours and how we might go about that integration and what are the cultural issues associated with such integration.
“What specific skills can New Zealand bring to countries like India and China so that we develop in partnership,” asks Hassed. “And what skills in those two countries can be harnessed to help grow New Zealand’s GDP?
“Our traditional trading partners will also be affected by the increasing influence of the Asian nations. If we only react to the steps those partners take we run the risk of finding that the prime partnerships with the Asian nations will have disappeared and New Zealand will be left in disadvantageous position.
“We must be more active now by, as nation, developing flexible, adaptable mindset.”
Watch the ’Stans: (Marilyn Waring heads the post-graduate programme in public policy at the Albany Campus of Massey University.)
“There’s nothing new at all about China, but it certainly is big, and I can’t get past it. And I’m not just meaning the human rights, trade, environment questions or the effects of human resource mobilisation and new markets and outward immigration, or even their steady accumulation of US dollars and the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ response to the pressure to float the yuan.
“Watch China in Africa, where it has good name for support of the old liberation movements (and doesn’t have to worry about the governance, human rights and corruption issues) as it pursues oil in Chad, Nigeria, the Sudan – and cropping in Zimbabwe – by partnerships involving Chinese government corporations which build the work camps and send Chinese nationals to work there.
“Take look at the world map to notice Chinese proximity to the ’Stans – in particular those to the north of Iran. Led by corrupt USSR party remnants, still governing over the mono production of whatever it was they did for years, beginning to mow down protests with government force, the centrally controlled states watch nervously the gathering active Islamic clerics in populations where religion was for so long suppressed. Watch China watching the ’Stans. And wait for more internal dissent in China and how it is treated, and what compromises are made by western leaders in the pursuit of trade. While ‘China’ is not an idea new to New Zealand business, New Zealand business just might have to work bit harder on its geopolitical analyses to make the most of opportunities, and to inform its ‘moral’ decisions, as we continue the turn from the ‘west’ to the ‘east’.”
The world is flat
How do you hang on to any sense of geographic locality when call to your local bank is answered from Bangalore or information about London bus timetables is delivered by someone who’s never set foot in the United Kingdom?
In his exploration of how the internet has ushered in whole new era of global connectivity, American author Thomas Friedman concluded that the world we now live in is, for all commercial intents and purpose, flat. (The world is flat: brief history of the 21st century is reviewed on page 21 of this issue.)
Our planet is now wired so that knowledge pools and the production of goods and services can be globally integrated as never before. Economic competition in this flat world will, says Friedman, be more equal and more intense; success will increasingly depend on having the imagination to figure out how all today’s enabling tools can be put together to create new products, communities, opportunities and profits.
He also warns that it is now imperative “we be the best global citizen we can be – because in flat world, if you don’t visit bad neighbourhood, it might visit you”.
Outsourcing is certainly reality in New Zealand – and quick peek at the origin of items stocked in almost any retail outlet helps explain why our own balance of trade payments is trending the wrong way.
One reaction from some of our New Zealand thought leaders is to be Kiwi proud.
Trustpower CEO Keith Tempest chose not to dwell on energy issues (“done to death”) except to suggest we should embrace hybrid vehicle technology as response both to rising oil prices and environmental degradation.
Instead his idea is to put the ‘buy Kiwi-made’ decision more firmly in consumer hands by adopting simple on-shelf labelling system. Using green/amber/red markers where the first is wholly New Zealand-made and last is totally imported would provide clear signal of product origin that might shock shoppers in “local” souvenir outlets just for starters.
“Having shelves of stuff made in China or Vietnam is okay in itself,” says Tempest, “but it doesn’t produce any wealth or income for the nation. So we end up being dependent on cows or sheep – and just become service industry to ourselves instead of being producers.”
The idea springs from Tauranga-based Trustpower’s support for “Stay in the Bay” initiative encouraging consumers to buy local – and its own support of regional suppliers. “It allows local firms to improve their own skill base and get higher skilled people to work with them and that progressively improves the economic base of the whole region,” says Tempest.
A similar concept could apply nationally as ongoing competition with low-wage economies risks impacting local wage levels and sta
