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"Idea Racism" and Solving our Financial Crisis
The longer the global financial crisis drags on, the more layers of complexity become exposed. Who would have thought that people all over the world would so avidly follow a financial drama with an arcane plotline involving subprime mortgages, derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, investment banks, commercial paper, credit default swaps, toxic debts, and recapitalization? Suddenly it seems every media commentator, blogger and barroom pundit has his own view on the crisis, its culprits and how the whole mess should be solved.
What can an advertising agency CEO add to this mix? Last week, as fears of a prolonged consumer recession multiplied, I spent a challenging day with undergraduates at Brown University, exploring my belief that the future of marketing communications lies in ending what I call "idea racism," in embracing global collaboration and creative solutions no matter where they originate. This week we've begun to see that concept play out on the global stage, as genuine partners join forces to coordinate their response to the financial disasters we're confronting, no longer certain that the American bailout and the British plan of action are the only programs for positive change.
While everyone has a stake in the drama and everyone has the right to an opinion, some opinions have more serious implications than others. Senior-level businesspeople monitoring the news in real time have more than their own households and financial well-being to worry about. Company leaders like me have thousands of stakeholders to consider: employees, clients, suppliers, shareholders, and local communities. They know that any decision has the potential to stabilize or destabilize many hundreds of households. Of course, a "wrong" decision will cause distress far and wide, but even a "right" decision in these uncertain times is likely to leave many people struggling.
Business leaders are not only faced with making some very tough decisions on the fly, they have become increasingly easy targets for blanket condemnation. In fact, the pro-business tide flowing since the early '80s may well be turning. The culture of business is entering the worst identity dilemma I have ever known--magazine covers presume we are crooked and college students wear T-shirts that decry our ethics ("CEOs Are Pigs").
Business leaders are suffering a general loss of respect far worse than the fallout from the demise of Drexel Burnham more than 15 years ago or the unraveling of MCI and Enron at the beginning of this decade. In the same week when Lehman Brothers was allowed to fold and AIG was up against the wall, Charlize Theron was on morning television talking about her role in the movie Battle in Seattle, about anti-globalization protesters.
Many of us were able to manage through the dot-com bust and earlier turbulent periods, but what we're living through now shows every sign of being different, and that's more than just media hype. It takes more than another blip in the business cycle for a levelheaded sage like Warren Buffett to make comparisons to Pearl Harbor. It takes more than some domestic difficulty to get several of the world's major economies to coordinate a bank rate cut. It takes more than a recession for governments to organize multibillion-dollar rescue packages.
This is the first time in at least three generations that we've experienced this kind of crisis of confidence. And it's certainly the first time in history that anyone has had to manage businesses in a globalized world of 24/7 connections and around-the-clock activity. Who, in any business or government leadership role, could have accumulated enough experience to navigate the current crisis with certainty?
No matter what happens, the coming months and years will provide intense on-the-job training for senior leaders. What works best will be whatever delivers the right mix of stability and adaptability to rebuild shaky confidence. In a recent article in the New York Times, World Bank President Robert Zoellick recalled a conversation with a senior Chinese economist who said that the Chinese don't see this as doomsday for the American economy: "They know America's ability to turn around problems is really unmatched, historically. At the same time, they ask themselves, Will the United States get at some of the root causes that could determine its real strength over the next 10 or 20 or 30 years?" Nobody knows for sure what to do next, but we do know that leaders must possess a cool-headed ability to evaluate the information bombarding them and a knack for provoking smarter thinking.
Today's leaders also need a sure-handed capacity for coordinating the talents and ideas of their teams: not so much "command and control" as "provoke, gather and coordinate." Who knows today, let alone tomorrow, where solutions to our problems might come from?
The same applies to ideas for breakthrough products we can barely yet imagine. Which means we have to stop idea racism. Smart answers can come from anywhere. Centuries ago, it was the fruits of Incan farming expertise (potatoes) that revolutionized European agriculture and societies; the genius of Tuscan traders that invented banking as we know it; the high-level thinking of Indian and Islamic scholars that established the concept of zero in mathematics; the dogged commitment of Japanese engineers that pioneered continuous improvement.
Which individuals or combinations of leaders and businesspeople will come up with strategies that resolve the short-term credit crisis, ensuring that entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies alike can continue to make payroll, let alone innovate? Henry Paulson? Gordon Brown? Nicolas Sarkozy? Who in the world has the desire or the ability to help the U.S. solve the mounting crisis in its aging rust belt? Will the best-in-class solutions to the alternative-energy conundrum be cracked by engineers working in labs on the Indian subcontinent or by those in Silicon Valley?
Hard times don't end at the U.S. borders, and neither do solutions. We have to open our minds, expand our expectations and communicate with thinkers outside our traditional circle of influence. We must depend on, and embrace, interdependence. In a globalized world where problems have global repercussions, senior leaders need to be tuned in to potential solutions from anywhere. "Not invented here" makes less sense than ever.
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Also, the smart thinking of Africans like Engineer Philip Emeagwali of Nigeria ("A Father of the Internnet":President Clinton) revolutionized the internet idea (http://www.emeagwali.com/) and Dr. Thomas Mensah of Ghana revolutionized the idea of "smart bomb" and the development of "Supersonic US Fighter Aircraft like the F-22, the fastest Jet in the World." He is alos the inventor of fiber optics in the United States ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW_nKCT6mYM).
As much as I agree with your post, I had to add this, because Africans tend to be left out when people are reciting the sources of contributors to human and technological advancements. This deliberate or unwitting omission plays directly into the "idea racism".
Thanks for that post. I would also like to add information regarding some of the work that is being done in Historically Black Colleges and Universities. For example, North Carolina A&T State University , my alma mater, has been working on technology called smart materials that has built in sensors that can detect when fractures and strains in the materials or bridges or other structures are about to occur. This technology has been implemented in the new bridge that has been built to replace the one that has collapsed in Minnesota. Here is a link to that article:
http://www.ccnmag.com/article/professor_has_technology_to_monitor_bridge_safety
North Carolina A&T State University is also working on starting a graduate program in nanotechnology.
http://www.ncnanotechnology.com/public/features/UNCG-NCAT.asp
I felt the need to put this information out, because a number of HBCU's are often overlooked and even when given recognition, only well-known schools such as Hampton, Howard, and Spelman are noticed. However NC A&T SU is one of the largest, if not largest programs for African American Engineering students followed by Tuskegee University.
One day this nation will acknowledge the work of Dr. Carver. His work with the ground nut fundamentally saved the nation.
Idea Racism??!!
A better term is Idea Prejudice or Concept Discrimination.
It seems that since we are part of a continuing global economy that began around 1492 with the arrival of Columbus to the Americas. And, that since we are interconnected economically, we should also be have the same legal protections and guarantees and benefits afforded to all.
What do I mean by this? Since our economy has such influence to people in say, Latin America, they produce goods and services for the US and the world, they should also benefit from the higher standards and protections we take for granted in the West. Things like secularism , protection of minorities, freedom of the press, true separation of church and state, trial by jury of peers, etc . . ..
How about listening to the workers at the bottom of the pyramid scam? Our economy is based on a unsustainable fantasy, and it looks like the fantasy part is ending. The reality is, wealth derives from the labor of producing something people really need. Greedy capitalists have outsourced most of that.
The dream world that advertising created and sold to the nation was just a dream. The system was always heavily weighted to favor the privileged few, and until that changes, we can look forward to more of the debacle we have seen unfolding.
You want a recipe? Stop shoveling money toward the wealthy, and fork it over to the workers. Start by publicly funded trade and vocational schools that will teach valuable skills, instead of letting non-academic kids just float out into the market unskilled. Any kid that can do college work and wants to go should get free college. Support small, organic farms and quit subsidizing the monocultural monsters that are destroying our topsoil-the source of all life on earth. But before all that, repeal the Patriot Act and abolish the FED and the DHS. Decriminalize drugs so the gangsters don't get all the profit, and cut the military budget by half. Double the minimum wage, and let members of congress retire on social security instead of their golden cadillac retirement plan they created for themselves. Term limits for them, as well. For starters.
The author proposes that this crisis is an opportunity for new ideas and that we should abandon our prejudices against some ideas, or in other words our sometimes rigid adherence to ideological preferences. Then let us take nothing as a given, nothing as too sacred a cow, nothing as an assumption that we cannot question. For example, the Washington Consensus of Milton Friedman just crashed and burned. Let's drop our subscription to its premises. I can agree with the concept of prejudice-free ideas if we really can start out with a clean slate.
For starters, let us agree to drop the spin and manipulation out of all commercial communications. No more fake ads, no more phony press conferences, no more B*ll S**t. Nobody pays any attention to it anymore anyway except its propagators. So let's drop it and be candid - utterly honest about everything in the political and economic worlds we find imposed on us.
Let's also declassify the information that citizens must have to make informed decisions about who should represent them. You have to be a psychologist, intelligence analyst, and lawyer to come close to figuring out what is going on in the economic, financial, and political dealing of our government and the corporate structure. Another thing, if we are to treat corporations like citizens, they cannot have profit as their sole raison d'etre. If they are profit machines, they don't warrant the protections we give citizens.
It's the Soviets, I believe, who put those they disagreed with in straightjackets.
With all due respect, sir, I think that perhaps you're part of the problem. Your distaste for bloggers, media commentators, and barroom pundits sounds more like Leona Helmsley than like someone who realizes that both labor and thoughts are generated by everyone. Not everyone is a troglodyte who exists to be sold whatever an advertising agency has been paid to sell them.
You noted "While everyone has a stake in the drama and everyone has the right to an opinion, some opinions have more serious implications than others." That sounds like a little thing I read somewhere... what was it... oh, it was "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Sir, this Sciguy animal is every bit as equal as you are. I may or may not be as smart as you are, but I'm certainly as well educated or better educated than you are (PhD in Pharmacology). The serious implications on my little blogger end of the financial world serious, too - if I simply stop spending money on the unnecessary products that advertising agencies advertise, your clients make less money and may not hire you in the future. If many Sciguy-like animals do the same, and keep our wallets closed except for buying unbranded necessities, no advertisers will be needed in the future.
Although advertisers appear to think they're better than we are, they depend on us - but we don't depend on them.
How much did you pay to view this website?
How much did you pay to comment on this website?
Nothing.
Because advertising runs on every page of HP.
I paid $70 / month to view and comment on this website.
Sciguy - Did you actually bother reading this article, or simply peruse, pick out a few hot words and phrases and then move straight to discredit mode? How did you take away any sort of distaste for bloggers, etc on the part of the author? Clearly, the point was that the world is watching with a vested interest and then some as the financial crisis unfolds - as evidenced by the amount of attention/discussion online, on TV, on the radio, at the corner shop, on the subways and at the proverbial water coolers.
As to the idea that some opinions having more serious implications than others - that's the fact, SciJack. Sure, your opinion matters. Mine, too. But does it matter as much as Paulson's, Bernanke's or the federal lawmakers? I'd like to think so, but then again, I can't pass a $700B bailout can I?
Of course, you've got it right, don't you. Flame a guy and his entire industry because he posted a point of view - one that espouses keeping an open mind to the source and nature of solutions. One that would give as much credence to your point of view as anyone else's. Seriously, a re-read is in order. Try it with a mind as open as Mr. Jeffrey's'.
"Suddenly it seems every media commentator, blogger and barroom pundit has his own view on the crisis, its culprits and how the whole mess should be solved." That doesn't sound overly favourable to me - it sounds like someone who is looking down his nose at the less-powerful.
The advertising industry is designed to sell things. Period. That's what they do. It's their job. It's what they're paid for. Sometimes it's honourable, sometimes not. Nowadays, just about everything is advertised - from oatmeal to presidential candidates. Even ad-free cable channels do advertise - for their own programming. Such is life.
Seriously, I read it 3 times before I posted a comment. Yes, our opinions matter as much as Paulson's and Bernanke's. They have power to do things that we do not have, and they certainly have more money than we do, but their opinions are also just informed opinions. And they, like us, have only one vote.
I think this type of vacuous nonsense typifies the quality of thought in "public relations".
And your comment typifies the quality of awareness and knowledge people show while trying to post comments online. Bob Jeffrey does not work in "public relations." Good try though.
The greatest idea racism in the last 30 years has been that you can achieve prosperity when you don't make anything, that moving money around can in and of itself create wealth. As we now see, this holds true only for a few and only for a while. Seems to me that instead of "protectionism" of US industries, what people are really saying is that we have to start producing "things" again, and we have to start working with new ideas (inventions) again. It is pretty clear, for example, that GM and the Volt will not be the ones to popularize the electric car, because the Volt is too little too late. It will be companies like Nissan and the French consortium, or maybe even Tesla Motors. There will be new breakthrough companies that will be the new GM's and the new Microsofts. Same for clean coal and solar. Our mistake would be to allow the oil companies to play politics with these advances so that they have enough time to take over the new technologies, rather than letting the actual developers (and the citizenry at large) benefit. This will also be Obama's greatest challenge -- how to nurture the real idea and product developers while all the old money is clamoring for a handout.
Bob Jeffery:
"Company leaders like me have thousands of stakeholders to consider: employees, clients, suppliers, shareholders, and local communities. They know that any decision has the potential to stabilize or destabilize many hundreds of households."
So I'm sure it was with heavy hearts that Carly Fiorino and others fired thousands, and sent jobs overseas while securing their golden parachutes. We're on to you guys now.
If socialism is a code word for racism and change is a code word for socialism then change is a code word for racism in reverse.
Socialism is a code word for enslavement, not racism.
Overdog you should travel more.
The US model of welfare for billionaires, crumbling infrastructures and record uninsured is a repellent to most people outside the US.
Go to Socialist Spain or Scandinavia and tell me these people are "enslaved".
Ignorance seems to go with neo-con ideology.
We live in a Socialist society - social security, social military, social transportation, social education, social regulatory committees, socialized healthcare, and now socialized financial institutions.
If you don't like Socialism, then go to Antartica. Or go have a debate with Joseph McCarthy.
If you want to be a rational person, then realize that we are debating degrees of socialism in this country, but all of us enjoy the same benefits of living in a country with social programs to help our people.
Overall, your comment is exactly what this article is about. You oppose ideas because you classify them under a word that politicians in this country have made you unrationally afraid of.
I don't understand how you come to the conclusion that socialism=racism, racism=change and change= socialism. Socialist societies pay no attention to race, because all people are treated equally. The civil rights era was about change and helped reduce racist policies and McSame is about change, but in my opinion isn't racist or socialist (neither is Obama). And change can be both capitalist or socialist.
So, in summary, what the hell are you talking about????
Show me a master plan that will go from A to Z with this proposal in ways that the World Bank doesn't. Where are the dollars coming for this, who is doing the accounting, And what " short term credit crisis" are you referring to?
The point isn't to globalize the solution, it's to localize the solution. Survival beats the best rhetoric any day.
SOCIAL RESTRUCTURING & WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION
The (DNIP) Democratic Nominee to the Imperial Presidency’s solution to the economic crisis is Social Restructuring by Wealth Redistribution using an aggressive Progressive Income Tax Plan, combined with an aggressive Affirmative Action Plan, taking from the strong and daring the innovators the Capital “C” Capitalist, and spreading the wealth directly to the vast herd of the common people, but with the twist of racism with Affirmative Action.
The combination of an economic meltdown, aggressive social engineering, and never ending warfare, its a death sentence to the American Dream!
This is absurd. In the last sixty years, our 'socialism' has steadily reduced the share of income and wealth held by the middle class and given it to the wealthy. This is easy enough to verify on www.census.gov.
Obama's policies take a small step in the direction of correcting that imbalance. Right now our Gini score, a measure of income inequality, is 45 and rising according to the CIA. That puts us in the same class as China and Mexico, to mention a few. Gini scores between 25 and 40 do the most to promote economic growth.
We lag many so-called socialist countries in average income--see Scandinavia as whole, for example. We also are tied with Mexico with the worst poverty rate in the OECD.
Anyone who supported Bush should be very careful about referring to anyone else in the context of an imperial presidency. Get some facts to go with your talking points
Spare us the Ayn Rand hero crap please. It's philosophically bankrupt narcissism.
McCain strongly supports the Progressive Income Tax Plan and until last year, he wanted to roll back Bush's tax cuts. And Obama and McCain have the same position on Affirmative Action.
Also, we've seen that tax cuts for the rich inflate company wealth in the short run, but without increasing the bank accounts of the lower class, the poor default on their massive debt and the economy collapses anyway. TOP-DOWN economics does NOT work. That's why we believe in free trade agreements, to tap into more consumer's with money.
That's why the rich will still get richer when the poor get more money - because the poor spend all their money and it ends up in the hands of the rich anyway. Bottom-up economics is 100% more effective than the Bush/McCain plan.
Mr Bob Jeffrey :
Obama will probably win with a Big Landslide and the Democrats will have to change some of their campaign economic ideas. Reality will ensue, and big pressure from the big economic powerhouses of the USA, Big Industrial Corporations, and other Big Service Giants.
Lots of people are enemies of anything "international" because they are afraid of losing their jobs. Outsourcing is the worst word in the English Language, the most hated word. Internationals are perceived as devils that eat American Jobs.
Obama and the Democrats are wonderful and I love them, but they will be changed by the Power of Reality and the Power of Big Business.
The Protectionist Discourse is wonderful to win the election and to get the Unions to vote. But an Isolated USA is not the best idea.
Some trade agreements have a strong International Political Reason to Be ( raison de etre ) and won't be easy to stop forever.
The best economic brains of the Democrats and Mr Obama will have a hard work convincing their base that the campaign ideas should have rational and pragmatic modifications.
I wonder if the tax and rebates ideas promised in the campaign will hold ???
http://tossUpStates.blogspot.com/
http://milenials.blogspot.com/
Vicente Duque
The Democrats are "wonderful"? You need to be put in a straightjacket.
Overdog is a Soviet: puts the people he disagrees with in straightjackets.
Obama has never mentioned repealing any trade agreements. He wants to renegotiate them. He is for free trade where workers are not mistreated and where the products imported are not dangerous to Americans.
If you are fine with malnourished kids dying on an assembly line in order for you to buy cheap baby food that gives your child lead poisoning, have at it, but I support Fair Free Trade, and if China or any other country is interested in tapping into the American consumer market to sell their crap, they better shape up or get cut off.
Enjoy your lead-flavored food - it only cost a child their life.
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