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PCMA CONVENING LEADERS PREVIEW
I
n January at PCMA 2013 Convening Leaders, Stéphane Garelli, a professor at the top-ranked International Institute for Management Devel-
opment (IMD) in Switzerland and a leading expert on global competitiveness, will present his view of what we can expect in the economic and business environment in 2013 and beyond. When Convene talked to Garelli in mid-October,
the United States was in the final weeks of a tight presidential race. That left a lot unknown — except, the professor noted, the fact that the results of the election “will impact everybody else” in the world. Whatever the outcome, Garelli is uniquely
qualified to interpret what changes in the global economy will mean and for whom. A former managing director of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Garelli is founder of IMD’s World Com- petitiveness Center and oversees the publication of the center’s World Competitiveness Yearbook, which annually ranks the competitiveness of 46 nations using more than 300 criteria. Convene spoke with Garelli about the general
nature of global competitiveness and the role that meetings play on the world’s economic stage.
What are some of the most common misperceptions about competitiveness? One is to reduce competitiveness simply to eco- nomic performance — which could be GDP growth for a country or profits for a company — where you compare yourself today with yourself yesterday. You may improve, but actually, competitiveness
is where you compare yourself today with others today. That is benchmarking, which is far more important. It is a little bit like if you are running a 100-meter race and you go from 14 seconds to 12 seconds after a lot of work and you are very happy with yourself. But if you are running 100 meters at 12 seconds, you are still the last one at the Olympic Games. So this is what we have tried to tell people: Benchmark yourself with the others. The second misconception [is equating] wealth
with competitiveness. You can be wealthy because you have a lot of natural resources, but not com- petitive; this would be, for example, the case of Saudi Arabia. You can be also very wealthy because of past competitiveness, what your parents and grandparents have done in a country. This mainly applies to Europe — the United Kingdom and France are very wealthy countries because they used to be very competitive. The contrary also exists. You have some
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countries which are very competitive and not wealthy. For example, Singapore is only 50 years old as a country and they are doing very well, but they do not have so much accumulated wealth. The big difference when I started 30 years ago,
when we were the pioneers in the field, is that economics was about budgets, trade, and interest rates, and no more. Today, when you are speaking about the economic development of a country, you are speaking also about the education system, the efficiency of government, and the quality of the infrastructure, technology, research, and sci- ence. And all of this we have integrated into the concept of competitiveness, in the same way that a company has also to manage its corporate culture. There is much more than just selling products.
‘If you are looking at the U.S., we are sometimes a little bit obsessed only by the budget situation. What we should never forget, number one, the United States is by far the largest country in the world in terms of technology. By far.’
I was surprised that the U.S. was ranked so highly — second behind Hong Kong — in the 2012 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook. I think that the reason is the following: If you are looking at the U.S., we are sometimes a little bit obsessed only by the budget situation. It is true there is a budget deficit. It’s true there is a problem in public finance, not only at the federal level, but also at the state level. California has a very big problem. Certain cities are not in good shape. But what we should never forget is, number one, the United States is by far the largest country in the world in terms of technology. By far. If you are looking at all of the innovations
which have shaken our world during the past 10 years, they were all born in the U.S., whether it is YouTube, the iPad, Wikipedia, the human genome — you name it, it all comes from the U.S. Secondly, the business efficiency and business
competitiveness of the U.S. is still unmatched. I think we see more entrepreneurs, more compa- nies with innovation, etc., in the U.S. today. Now, it doesn’t mean you don’t have it elsewhere, but it happens in the U.S. Number three, there is a formidable resource
of knowledge, of competence, of education at the higher level. Secondary school is another story, but at the highest level, university is still outstanding. And finally, the United States is a large country with all types of natural resources. Land, agricul- ture, is number one in the world. And now you start to discover gas is everywhere. So people have a little bit of a tendency to sell themselves a bit short.