Open Letter to President-elect Obama

I agree with President-elect Obama that we all have to work together and that it is time to act. This is why I feel compelled to write this open letter. What I am about to write is not found in economic textbooks even though it has been more than fifty years since Robert Solow introduced the idea of "Incresing Returns" and almost twenty years since Paul Romer expanded on Solow's ideas and introduced us to a "New Growth Theory" (for a non-economist explanation of Increasing Returns read: Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations by David Warsh). My suggestions are an outgrowth of both Solow's and Romer's ideas, placed in todays' contexts. I believe in our President-elect's ability to explain new and innovative approches to solving our nations economic ills with confidence, to a country ready for something new and creative.

Other than infrastructure upgrades, I would like to hear about innovation that results in sustained productivity not only in the short term but also in the future, rather than just spending money on traditional industrial age, legacy solutions. Someone within this incoming administration needs to talk about, plan and implement strategies for the re-intermediation of workers who, for what ever reason, have lost their jobs-disintermediated-in the production sector.

I suggest alternative, creative solutions, albeit little known, to move away from limited-resource markets-based on the old enterprise logic of Production Management-from the industrial economy. As Romer said in an interview with Reason Magazine: "New Growth Theory shows that economic growth doesn't arise just from adding more labor to more capital, but from new and better ideas expressed as technological progress". Instead, train people as knowledge workers in areas of information markets like communications, entertainment, EDUCATION, publishing, computers, robotics, biotechnology and other sectors we have not even created. Information is an unlimited resource; in fact information is virtually “free”. The tools for this policy implementation are ubiquitous and it could happen smoothly and quickly. The “tools”-computerized products and other appliances with which we connect to the Internet-are also available and affordable. (No shovel in the ground or asphalt needed here!) We would be training and familiarizing knowledge workers for the here and now while also preparing them for the future. The future of value creation is in establishing and maintaining networks among and between knowledge workers allowing for the collaboration needed in all phases of business organizations or enterprises for innovation, growth and sustainability. This takes advantage of digitization and all the new and exciting business ideas that are transforming business models-a la Chris Anderson and The Long Tail. The key for innovation is “mass collaboration” or taking advantage of the Architecture of Participation-read Wikinomics.

Redirect away from just thinking of IT as the world of "techies" or technology engineers and toward technology enabled resources. This will take a huge intellectual and psychological leap or transformation. The means and the experts that can make this happen already exist. It is time to act!