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I snapped a shot of our lovely light house covered in snow here on the shores of Lake Michigan. 30 years of western Michigan winters and I still get cold just looking at it!

I am taken with how much complexity is being introduced with China just revving up their economic might and concerned about our business's ability to respond. Just little things, like how well the company's values fit with a different culture? How do we prepare leaders in community based businesses to understand their next move may be to Shanghai? I didn't like being transferred to another state! Our dominance has been based on our economic might...how long until we are second? Economics and commerce seem to be driving politics now, but my guess is that there may well be political ramifications if we do not find a way to accept and work with China's might. That re-imagine thing comes to mind...

Posted by Mike Neiss at January 2, 2008 7:29 PM

George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux writes repeatedly on this theme at Cafe Hayek (a great blog). But, his take is that only when a country develops just such a trade imbalance does it become truly successful, i.e. the US and the EU economies are much more successful than those with which they have negative trade imbalances. He makes the case that only by importing more than exporting does an economy truly grow and become really productive. Really, I can't do his theory justice here, you have to read it.

Mike N.--I'm still in Michigan and I still get cold! But, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Posted by mike at January 3, 2008 7:18 AM

Wait a minute! I remember the 1990 book "The Machine That Changed the World".

This book outlined the enormous tasks facing Western companies in the 1990s and had cogent messages for Japanese firms as well, as they moved abroad.

"The Machine That Changed the World" was based on the largest and most thorough study ever undertaken in any industry: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted a five-million-dollar, five-year, fourteen-country International Motor Vehicle Program's study of the worldwide auto industry.

Twice in this century the auto industry changed our most fundamental ideas about how to make things. Just as mass production swept away craft production, so a new way of making things, called lean production was the buzz word that rapidly made mass production obsolete."

Honda initially selling cars in the U.S. begat Honda, Toyota and Hyundai making cars in the U.S.

When will we wake up? While many superior goods are manufactured abroad just as many inferior goods and services continue to flood the market.

Innovation, technology, plain old hard work, "re-imagining" and risk taking can produce superior goods and services anywhere. With oil at $100 a barrel, global warming, the continued growth of internet commerce, and 75 million aging baby boomers what are the next changes that will sweep this and other countries?

Posted by Tom at January 4, 2008 11:25 AM