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Today it's all about being open or closed
By Jean-Pierre Lehmann |
December 2, 2010, Thursday
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MY friends with teenagers tell me that when they say something old-fashioned their children admonish them: "Oh, mom (or dad), that is soooooooooooo 20th century."
An example of atavistic 20th century thinking is to see politics divided between right and left. Ideology is a poor - and at times catastrophic - guide to managing society. The political "ism" of the 21st century must be pragmatism. The goal is to achieve the maximum degree of social justice, individual well-being and personal freedom.
The key question of the 21st century is not whether you are on the left or on the right, but whether you are "open" or "closed." This applies to nations, firms, institutions and individuals. To be closed is simple and perhaps the visceral human reaction. To be open is a much greater challenge.
Openness means open to ideas, objects and people. The rise of the West from the Renaissance onwards, contrary to what is often assumed, owes a great deal to borrowings from Arabic, Persian, Indian and Chinese civilizations.
The value of openness to people from outside can be illustrated from multiple examples.
In the 12th century, Cordoba (in Spain) was a flourishing center of science and civilization as Islamic, Jewish and Christian scholars cross-fertilized. With the inquisition and the expulsion of Jews and Arabs, Cordoba (as the rest of Spain) became and remained for a long time a stagnant backwater.
As the Japanese economic miracle dazzled the planet in the 1960s, Japanese policy makers sought to establish a global center of science and innovation. Among many initiatives was the founding of Tsukuba Science City in Ibaraki prefecture. Because Japan is not open to foreigners, Tsukuba never took off. Everyone knows Silicon Valley and no-one knows Ibaraki because the former is the world's most amazing hodgepodge of nationalities and ethnicities, while the latter is emphatically not.
From the outbreak of World War I to the implosion of the Soviet Empire, the 20th century was marked by its extremist ideologies and ultra-nationalisms. It was a closed world. It has only been since the early 1990s that we have entered a world that is mainly open with some remaining closed pockets.
This is the environment in which business has been able to thrive. Markets have opened up as the pools of human, material and financial resources have greatly multiplied and diversified.
We must remember that what is open can close. In the last few years we have witnessed a resurgence of ethno-centricism, racism and intolerance. These reactionary forces are especially pronounced among the established G3 powers - the EU, Japan and the US - but also in some of the emerging countries.
Ask yourself if you favor openness? Has your openness awakened your intellectual curiosity and interest in fellow men so that today you feel you have a reasonable knowledge of, say, Indian, Chinese and Islamic culture?
When you go outside your familiar home landscape, do you inform yourself about its history, customs, demographics, and social dynamics?
There is a tendency for business executives to say "I am not interested in politics." The fact is that politics is a reality of life, whether or not you are interested and it greatly impacts business. In the words of the great Irish 18th century political philosopher Edmund Burke: "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing."
Similarly, all that is needed for the world to close again is for those who wish it to be open to be out to lunch!
(The author is Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at IMD. He is also the Founding Director of the Evian Group at IMD. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
An example of atavistic 20th century thinking is to see politics divided between right and left. Ideology is a poor - and at times catastrophic - guide to managing society. The political "ism" of the 21st century must be pragmatism. The goal is to achieve the maximum degree of social justice, individual well-being and personal freedom.
The key question of the 21st century is not whether you are on the left or on the right, but whether you are "open" or "closed." This applies to nations, firms, institutions and individuals. To be closed is simple and perhaps the visceral human reaction. To be open is a much greater challenge.
Openness means open to ideas, objects and people. The rise of the West from the Renaissance onwards, contrary to what is often assumed, owes a great deal to borrowings from Arabic, Persian, Indian and Chinese civilizations.
The value of openness to people from outside can be illustrated from multiple examples.
In the 12th century, Cordoba (in Spain) was a flourishing center of science and civilization as Islamic, Jewish and Christian scholars cross-fertilized. With the inquisition and the expulsion of Jews and Arabs, Cordoba (as the rest of Spain) became and remained for a long time a stagnant backwater.
As the Japanese economic miracle dazzled the planet in the 1960s, Japanese policy makers sought to establish a global center of science and innovation. Among many initiatives was the founding of Tsukuba Science City in Ibaraki prefecture. Because Japan is not open to foreigners, Tsukuba never took off. Everyone knows Silicon Valley and no-one knows Ibaraki because the former is the world's most amazing hodgepodge of nationalities and ethnicities, while the latter is emphatically not.
From the outbreak of World War I to the implosion of the Soviet Empire, the 20th century was marked by its extremist ideologies and ultra-nationalisms. It was a closed world. It has only been since the early 1990s that we have entered a world that is mainly open with some remaining closed pockets.
This is the environment in which business has been able to thrive. Markets have opened up as the pools of human, material and financial resources have greatly multiplied and diversified.
We must remember that what is open can close. In the last few years we have witnessed a resurgence of ethno-centricism, racism and intolerance. These reactionary forces are especially pronounced among the established G3 powers - the EU, Japan and the US - but also in some of the emerging countries.
Ask yourself if you favor openness? Has your openness awakened your intellectual curiosity and interest in fellow men so that today you feel you have a reasonable knowledge of, say, Indian, Chinese and Islamic culture?
When you go outside your familiar home landscape, do you inform yourself about its history, customs, demographics, and social dynamics?
There is a tendency for business executives to say "I am not interested in politics." The fact is that politics is a reality of life, whether or not you are interested and it greatly impacts business. In the words of the great Irish 18th century political philosopher Edmund Burke: "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing."
Similarly, all that is needed for the world to close again is for those who wish it to be open to be out to lunch!
(The author is Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at IMD. He is also the Founding Director of the Evian Group at IMD. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
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