Are We Learning?

“Three scenes from the new battle for global economic supremacy:

“King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the country that sits on 25% of the planet's oil, knows that oil is not his country's future. That's why he's spending $12.5 billion to found a graduate research university, which he'll endow with $10 billion -- as big an endowment on day one as MIT has built in 142 years. The point of this project, on a grand scale even by Saudi standards: to attract the best researchers in science and technology.

“The European Union has proposed new rules to attract the world's most highly skilled workers. If they can show that they're well educated and hold an offer of a lucrative job in Europe, they can get a two-year renewable permit to live there. The problem Europe is trying to solve: 85% of emigrating unskilled workers from developing countries go to Europe, but only 5% of skilled workers do so.

“HCL Technologies, an Indian infotech services firm, has noticed a major change in its best young employees. Until two or three years ago, few of them would work for it unless they were promised an overseas assignment. Now it's just the opposite: They see India as the most compelling source of excitement and opportunity, and they don't want to be sent away…

“Companies have been battling for years to attract and keep the best people. Now countries are engaging in the same fight…

“Since this is a fundamentally new fight, no one is sure what will win it. But we can already identify some fairly deep and difficult questions the fight raises. How countries answer them will help determine national wealth and power.

“How long will any country tolerate Info Age protectionism? … No country can have world-class workers if it continually protects them from world-class competition…

“Why isn't the U.S. more serious about the key competitive advantage of the Info Age, education? How to make human capital more valuable is no mystery, yet the world's richest country still has nowhere near the world's best education system…

“This international fight for talent will get much more serious. With luck, it will lead to something new: a free market in brainpower. That may not come to pass -- but wise nations will prepare for it.”

(“The Battle for Brainpower.” Geoff Colvin. Fortune: December 10, 2007. Vol. 156, Iss. 12; pg. 34)

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