As we move into a new business year for the Chamber, I would encourage our members to be cognizant of our competitive position, not only in the Central New Jersey region and State, but also globally. With the advent of the free movement of people, goods, services and capital around the world, globalization and the information technology revolution, we now compete with our next door neighbor as well as our neighbors around the world. As a business community, we must be prepared for the challenge. We need to not only update our business tools but also the skills of our workers. The days of the low-skilled, low-paid worker are giving way to high-skilled, low-paid workers around the world. During the recent recession, a report by McKinsey and Company found that companies made up for roughly 98% of their lost revenue by laying off workers and replacing them with automation and outsourcing. The use of the “cloud” for relatively low cost computing power and the implementation of cheaper, more powerful tools has enabled people to be connected around the world and do business more efficiently and cost effectively than any other time in our history.
How do we cope with this new competition and changing landscape of our workforce? We can compete by investing in innovation, education, entrepreneurship and leadership. By not only investing in the IT tools now available to us, but also by listening to our customers and workers to create new solutions to challenges and ideas for improving products, we are innovating and transforming the old process. We can work with our educational institutions to provide programs for upgrading the skills of our workforce so that we produce more high-skilled, high value, high-paid employees necessary to give the American worker the advantage over any other worker in the world. We can demand greater student achievement through better performance of our schools by upgrading teaching methods to 21st century requirements and building systems that retain top teachers. We can use our voices to influence the nature of public-private partnerships and public policies to make the risks of becoming an entrepreneur and developing new products more acceptable.
According to economist Neil Irwin, the U.S. economy has generated perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households for the better part of the past 70 years. The past decade, however, was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times. In order to regain our competitive edge, we need to re-establish some of the basics that made us the greatest economic power in the world: education, infrastructure, research and development, recruitment of talented people and the freedom to employ our abilities and energy to create value in the market place.
Our current political environment poses limitations that may cause us to lose our competitive edge globally. From corporations to small business, we have the power to not only prevent this from occurring, but to work together to evolve our edge and position. Here in Central New Jersey, we can unite as a Chamber of Commerce to provide the leadership necessary to make American business continue to be the leader in the world in production of goods, services and innovation.
