Davos Forum IV - A Fresh Look at Power Shifting

- This post is copied from Frontier Blog at http://www.hwswworld.com/wp, by Frontier Journal, High-tech Think Tank and Action Workbench Davos Forum 2007 will start from today in just a few hours, and the five-day meeting’s theme is “Shaping the Global Agenda: The Shifting Power Equation”. With the inevitable adoption of global localization and local globalization, the world is indeed becoming a village, thanks to the rapid innovation in both technology and business process. Typically people agree that the power, whether economic or non-economic, are starting shifting from those developed countries to those developing countries, or so called emerging countries, such as China, India and Brazil among others. In certain sense, that is right, partly due to the size of those developing markets and the size of that affordable yet high-quality labor pool in those developing countries. However, we should never underestimate the power of those developed countries, such as US, UK, Germany, Japan among others. I believe the power is shifting indeed, but it is definitely not one-way, it’s two-way, and the shifting paradigm is back and forth. Why? Since the source of shifting power is not just market size, labor pool size any more in the New Economy. The fundamental source of next generation power shifting will be innovation, and in that sense, all countries are equal to compete on innovation capability, whether you are big or small, rich or poor, developed or developing. I think it is good to all of us, as a global citizen, fair competition through free trade is a great way to enhance our material life as well as spiritual wealth. For those developing countries in rapid progress, it might be better for them to pay more attention to environmental issues, intellectual property issues among others while accelerating aggressively; and for those developing countries, it is might be good for them to recall how they emerged from developing countries to developed one decades ago or a century ago. For both developing countries and developed countries, we all should remember that, No Pain, No Gain, and a balance between short-term interests and long-term interests is a good way to go. It is all about attitude, let us keep positive attitude towards the Change, or the Shifting of Chang. In MBA buzzword, that is called Change Management anyway. Between War and Peace, no one, if rational, wants war, no matter economic wars or military wars, instead of peace. Looking back from the history, many military wars were triggered due to economic conflicts, could they be prevented? Of course, one evidence is, since World War II, we have enjoyed many decades of peace, despite of numerous regional conflicts, thanks to the World Security Council under the United Nations and the WTO. The balance of power, whether politically or economically are difficult, especially when during power shifting stage, that requires the political and economical wisdoms of our leaders, as well as fellow global citizens like you and me. Nowadays, you can voice and people might listen to you if you are right. Davos Forum is a great place for people to voice, this year it is still for those elites, maybe next year there will be some representatives of grassroots to be invited to speak up there As I used to say, the Beauty of Life Is Its Uncertainty, Be creative and use your imagination, let us make our life even more beautiful together in this rapidly changing world