National Competitiveness – The Council on Competitiveness – A Look Back from 2035

I woke up in 2035 this morning and was saddened by the growing socio-economic impacts of the US declining GDP per capita quagmire. Yes, 2035.

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The renewed vigor in 2035 to catch up with Europe, China and parts of LatAm competitively seems too little too late. The massive tech/medical and synbio hubs in Leon keep sapping towns along the border as Houston falls deeper into decay ever since the Chinese Fusion breakthrough battered our energy sector.

Looking back to 2023 and the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, along with the other dozen change waves hitting all economies, we seemed poised for success, but now, with the insight of hindsight, it was clear that we failed in 3 key areas:

1.???? Innovation Infrastructure and Leadership

While the governments of France, China, the UK and places like Estonia doubled down, we relied on the invisible hand of the market to do its thing. We simply failed to make government bolster, cross-pollinate, leverage, and force multiply the amazing set of US assets like national labs, state universities, DoD, USPS (yes the USPS), market scale, huge R&D spend, and talent to create a winning innovation infrastructure.

In the global knife fight that is economic competition, we failed to act on the obvious. The winner isn't the biggest, boldest knife fighter. It is the agile, smart, often little guy that invents the gun and joins the fight. (Ends badly for knife fighters).

Looking back, this leadership gap and lack of asset/capability leverage was borderline criminal and threw away a sustainable competitive advantage.

2.???? Education, Platforms, Talent Supply Chain, Best Team on the Field

Around 2023 and beyond, we spent much time on the politics of education. We spent almost no time on what, in hindsight, were the five most important things:?

a.???? Efficacy - fixing the real root problems that caused our spend per capita to be one of the highest and our performance rankings across several areas clearly lagging versus ‘developed’ nations.

b.??? Technology Leapfrog - how do we broadly apply emerging tech to leap forward in education. China's ‘cloning’ of ChatGPT7 and the creation of educational volitional agents for every student linked to hyperscale/hyperspeed Big Data and a semi-autonomous edge intelligent fabric with BR replacing XR sent them so far ahead that catching up seemed impossible.

c.???? Mini Steps at the Margins versus a Moonshot - there were many micro well-meaning efforts aimed at improvement when in retrospect, a moonshot macro program was needed to be led from Washinton, DC.

d.??? Redesign for the Times - there was almost zero work on thinking out what the education system's output was versus what the modern world needed. Our educational talent supply chain failed to meet the needed demand as other nations nailed this. The 'academic/training' world moved further apart from the talent/training needs of a modern labor market, and jobs migrated away, of course hurting us competitively.

e.????Educational Equity -fielding your best and complete talent/team from the entire population matters as competition heats up. Disenfranchising significant sectors and diluting educational quality/opportunity along socioeconomic lines is simply self-defeating and welcomed by our competitors who have fixed this.

3. Innovation Hubs / Centers of Excellence

The earlier faltering attempts to try and create national accelerator approaches and networked centers of excellence/innovation for 6G, Robotics, Volitional Agents, SSS - software self-assembly, Climate Tech, Multi-Modal Robotic Transport, AI Utility Fabrics, Healthtech, Agtech, Dual Use Defense, Informatic Plasticity, Nanotech/Material Science, SynBio, Proteomics, Neurotech, and Additive Manufacturing ceded those rich domains to other nations.

The French Innovation Example

Back in 2013 France was great if you wanted a boulangerie but the worst for innovation. They focused, stayed focus,ed and by 2023, had an integrated, smart innovation platform/ecosystem fully supported by the government that should have worried us. France went from being the last place on earth to create and build an innovative startup to a vibrant, government-supported, effective, low bureaucracy, energized ecosystem. It took them ten years. They had help. Macron befriended John Chabers and listened and stayed engaged. He set a goal for 25 unicorns by 2025. They hit that goal in 2022. In 2022 they upgraded pan-government digital leadership to a full minister, specifically the Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty.

Leadership from the top and a national priority made it work for France, yes France. They did a great job of leveraging national assets.

I love the French/France (despite their 1860s adventurism in Mexico), but in 2013 if you had to pick France beating us at baseball or innovation, you might have picked baseball, and they so so suck at baseball.

The Dead End Destination

Back in 2023 there was also a mountain of evidence and historical examples of what happens to nations that have an extended period of declining GDP per capita from continually becoming less competitive yet that alarm bell failed to ring.

Climate Tech/Impact

In 2035 we saw our first F7 tornado cut a huge path through downtown Houston. Luckily downtown Houston was largely abandoned already after the energy crash when China won the Fusion race. The good news is Cycloponics (founded in France in 2015) has cut a deal to quickly level the area with hypersonic graders and fabricate/print vertical farms. It will create quite a few robotics ecosystem jobs, but the best-trained folks in that area are in Leon and will need to be heavily recruited. It will be up and running in time to supply fresh food for the next Superbowl, which will be at the metastadiumplex in Leon, and it will most likely be the longstanding NFL favorites, the Leon Lions and the Tottenham Spurs.

China and Europe lead the way on climate tech, preventative response, and economic gain. It is estimated that $18T of new revenue came from climate-related domains, most of it outside the US.

Okay, so it's actually March 28th, 2023, not 2035. I hope this story is provocative and illustrative.

Here's an article from earlier this week from the formidable Deborah L. Wince-Smith who runs the Council on Competitiveness, where in a moment of weakness they let me be a Senior Fellow.

Deborah L. Wince-Smith Chad Evans Anna Catalano Michael Crow Wendy Howell Aicha Evans Andrew Lippman Dan Ariely Chunka Mui John Sviokla Nick Beucher Juan Santos Ellen Levy Laura Jana MR Rangaswami Marc-Michel Stack Jean-No?l Barrot Stuart Evans David Chun R May Lee Jennifer S. Albert "Al" P. Pisano, Ph.D. Adam Goldberg ?sa Tamsons Gamiel Gran Bryan MacDonald John Ainley Olof Pripp Walter Parkes Aaron Grosky

#2035 #4ir #innovation #jeannoelbarrot #UScompetitiveness #6g