The World is Flat but not Bleak

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to hear Thomas Friedman again. For the most part his presentation was similar to the one I heard him give a year ago. The world has become a flat place because of the integration of technologies that allow individuals not countries or companies to control their destinies. That is an interesting argument. But in the original book Friedman ended on a pessimistic note - he had this great quote that when he was growing up it was better to be a B student in the US than an honors student somewhere else. But in the book he argued that because the world is becoming (or already) flat - that is no longer true. In his speech a year ago - he commented that there was a lot of data that the American system of education was not training the right kinds of skills - not enough math and science, for example, compared to other nations.

But yesterday he was a bit more positive. He defined a series of what he called middle jobs - those tasks in this new world that would produce good incomes and would be hard to reduce to automation. Those categories (which were pretty much self explanatory) are Collaborators, Leveragers,Synthesizers,Explainers,Localizers, Green (people who understand the environmental imperative),Passionate Personalizers (people who add a personal touch to a vanilla task) and Great adapters. But then he asked what should educational institutions do to assure that people can get into those skills? He suggested that the most important skills (in addition to the basic ones) were creating an Ability to learn how to learn (Learn from great teachers) and a focus on how to stimulate passion and personal touch. He had a wonderful equation
CQ+PQ is always greater than IQ
Curiosity and Passion is better than IQ

Obviously a lot of these skills are the right brained skills that some institutions completely ignore.

What was also interesting was Friedman, who in the Lexus and the Olive Tree seemed to have gotten this issue but understated it in The World is Flat, commented that markets and market like activity do offer the US an advantage. We do not have a lock but we do have a leg up because of the commitment to the market. His one great line yesterday was never cede a century to a country that censures google.