Waiting around

When I am speaking in public about how we need to rethink our education system to compete in the global marketplace, I am often asked: “Well, what are our competitors doing?”

Funny premise there: As long as no one else is teaching kids to think in innovative and creative ways, we don’t need to either. As if the world were simply standing still, happy to leave comparative advantages–and comparative disadvantages–right where they are.

Well, not surprisingly, things don’t quite happen that way.

Countries around the world are climbing up the value chain, looking to grow their own industry, and innovation, and capacity. They are not simply dong more of the same in the hopes that no one else is thinking in new ways. In fact, as I posted not long ago, in some ways, they have already passed the United States.

More news in the past few weeks: China recently announced it was creating a company to compete with Boeing and Airbus to produce long haul aircraft, the jets that are… you guessed it… the high end of the value chain in that industry–the things that require the highest level of technical and conceptual sophistication.