- Jay Maharjan

When the American economy moved from agricultural days to the industrial age in mid 1950s, there was an official term ‘ industrial discipline’ used to direct the new workforce to adjust to the demand of the industrial revolution. The movement behind the industrial discipline prepared the new white collar converts to think, act and present themselves professionally.  Organizations, corporations comprising of this newly trained workforce with a strong corporate discipline enabled the regional leadership in the Corporate world. Productivity grew in a scale unheard of before. The new concept of corporation produced an enormous economy of scale that allowed organizations to think outside of their local scope and to truly expand in the National and International level.  The initial industrial discipline, the arrival of the modern management and the valuing of knowledge workers collectively allowed the US economy to grow successfully for the next five decades.

Today, the economy is facing huge hurdles to sustain the growth rate. While government and economists are scrambling to understand the new trend and trying to figure out what is in store for the future, I think we have to head back to the fundamentals, drawing board to understand what made industrial revolution so successful. During the early days of industrial transformation, there was significant cultural, social change – to get ready for the new way of working, lifestyle.

We are in the cross roads of another major revolution that I would like to call – the call to understand the conceptual economy – the economy that will need same level of infrastructure building and social participation, support like what industrial revolution saw in the earlier days. This time around, the economy will be salvaged by savvy entrepreneurs and not by the mega corporations of the likes of GM and GE.

Among other revolutionary factors, social media revolution is for real. Experts are predicting that social media heavy hitters like Face book is going to be more of an infrastructure in the future – that it will have direct influence on the governance and all facets of socio-economic policies. This is an era for open source, Inter-Nation collaboration, collective effort to seek sustainable innovation more organically than through relying on strong corporate governance that we are used to.

This calls for unwritten mandate, the new discipline among entrepreneurs – comparable to the nationwide backing of the industrial discipline. How do we achieve this level of discipline?

a. by building camaraderie, collaboration among entrepreneurs

As I get ready for my trip to London Business school, I have realized that the UK is ahead of the States when it comes to camaraderie among entrepreneurs. There are several hubs dedicated strictly to help fellow entrepreneurs – compared to the web sites trend based out of the United States where majority of hubs are driven by monetary incentives. The United States must re-enforce the entrepreneurial state of mind among its 13% entrepreneurial workforce – by encouraging fellowship, incentive for entrepreneurs to collaborate.

b. educating the government

Entrepreneurs must take lead when it comes to get right support from the government. What took over 50 years to see a mature knowledge economy, the window to take lead in the conceptual economy will be narrow. It will simply be too late to take actions when things become obvious. In developing economies like India, elite institutes like IIT (Indian Institute of technology) is aggressively pushing entrepreneurship curriculum. China with the strong centralized infrastructure on policy making (which offers short-term unfair advantage) is pushing even harder to execute new entrepreneurship models. As I often write on this topic, the government must act to loosen, amend lending standards, rates to encourage entrepreneurship.

c. reforming pre-college education; including curriculum on entreprenurship and International economies.

Pre-college curriculum is where the United States can make significant difference. Entrepreneruship curriculum and courses on foreign markets and cultures allow Youth to possess a strong sense of business as well as cultural and geographic knowledge that the US youth desperately lack.

d. by adapting to new form of global giving

I posted an article written about Vinod Khosla on how he is using capitalism to tackle poverty. Capitalism has to be a new and effective tool to participate in the global giving.  I strongly oppose foreign aids. Foreign Aid or Welfare programs in case of local programs are short term remedies that kill entrerpeneurial spirit. The piece on Khosla makes a lot of sense that he argues that the world’s poor offers economy of scale for new products. Enableing underpriviledged to become consumers makes a lot of sense. As some of the smart investors like Soros have done ( by investing for 4% of Mumbai stock market), while local investors in these economies are investing in the Western economies, there are some tremendous opportunities in these emerging markets.