The real new economy

During the soar-and-swoon days of the late 1990s, many people believed that information technology, and the Internet in particular, were "changing everything" in business. A fundamental change did happen in the 1990s, but it was less about technology than about competition. Under director Diana Farrell, the McKinsey Global Institute has conducted an extensive study of productivity and its connection to corporate IT spending and use during that period. The study revealed that information technology is important--but not central--to the fate of industries and individual companies. So if information technology was not the primary factor in the productivity surge, what was? The study points to competition and innovation. In those industries that saw increases in competitive intensity, managers were forced to innovate aggressively to protect their revenues and profits. Those innovations--in products, business practices, and technology--led to the gains in productivity. In fact, a critical dynamic of the new economy--the real new economy--is the virtuous cycle of competition, innovation, and productivity growth. Managers can innovate in many ways, but during the 1990s, information technology was a particularly powerful tool, for three reasons: First, IT enabled the development of attractive new products and efficient new business processes. Second, it facilitated the rapid industrywide diffusion of innovations. And third, it exhibited strong scale economies--its benefits multiplied rapidly as its use expanded. This article reveals surprising data on how various industries in the United States and Europe were affected by competition, innovation, and information technology in the 1990s and offers insights about how managers can get more from their IT investments.     

Networked incubators. Hothouses of the new economy

Business incubators such as Hotbank, CMGI, and Idealab! are a booming industry. Offering office space, funding, and basic services to start-ups, these organizations have become the hottest way to nurture and grow fledgling businesses. But are incubators a fleeting phenomenon born of an overheated stock market, or are they an important and lasting way of creating value and wealth in the new economy? The authors argue that one type of incubator, called a networked incubator, represents a fundamentally new and enduring organizational model uniquely suited to growing businesses in the Internet economy. It shares certain features with other incubators--mainly, it fosters a spirit of entrepreneurship and offers economies of scale. But its key distinguishing feature is its ability to give start-ups preferential access to a network of potential partners. Such incubators institutionalize their networking--they have systems in place to encourage networking, helping start-ups, for example, to meet with potential business allies. That doesn't mean incubatees get preferential treatment; it means only that they have built-in access to partnerships that might not have existed without the incubator. Even with this advantage, however, networked incubators can easily follow the road to ruin. To avoid failure, they must create a portfolio of companies and advisers that their incubatees can leverage. That can be done by strategically investing in portfolio firms and by enlisting a large set of business allies. It can also be done by establishing connections and relationships that are anchored more to the incubator than to particular individuals.     

Knowledge, skill, and education in the new global economy

This paper deals with three main topics. The first is the nature of post-industrial, service-based economies in which human capital has special importance. In the new global economy, sharp distinctions between services and goods become more difficult to draw, as exemplified by computer software, perhaps the purest embodiment so far of a knowledge-based industry in which human and organizational capital account for nearly all value added. Where does this intangible capital come from? That is the subject of the second section of the paper, which discusses the meanings attached to knowledge, skill and other components of human capital, sketching out a view emphasizing tacit know-how and the lessons of experience. This sets the stage for a third section outlining a number of implications for higher education.     

发现中国经济新引擎

支撑中国经济高速或稳健前行的动力引擎在哪里？是什么？不妨暂且假定农业或环保产业将是推动中国战车二度启动的动力引擎,但是,一个产业或几个产业从发轫到辉煌,又岂是一两年可以达成的？中国经济发展的再度提速,无疑难度不小,并需要长时间     

论“新经济”对当代金融发展的影响

“新经济”是在20世纪末出现的一个新范畴，是指以技术创新为主导动力，以质量型增长为内涵的新经济形态。正确认识新经济，认真研究新经济条件下金融发展的新现象、新规律，对我国金融业的进一步改革开放是十分必要的。     

Western industrial countries: brighter economic outlook,but world economy not out of the woods yet

Western industrial countries: brighter economic outlook, but world economy not out of the woods yet     

"适足经济理论":泰国可持续经济发展的新路线

适足经济理论是可应用于个人、家庭、社区、国家等各个层次的处世哲学和治国理念.它包含三项基本原则,即适度、合理和有内在的免疫力.该理论指导人们重视正直、诚实、勤奋、知识、智慧、敏锐等方面素质的培养.     

The world economy and the German economy in the spring of 1992

The world economy and the German economy in the spring of 1992     

Population, ecology and the new economics : Guidelines for a steady-state economy

This article is concerned with the necessity of modifying the well known classical theory of demographic transition because of recent developments, particularly in the worldwide ecological situation. It affects statements about developing as well as industrialized countries and is urgently needed in view of the dominant role transition theory plays in practice, planning and forecasting. The basic ideas of a demoecological transition theory is developed. The final part is a draft, with necessary consequences, of the new guidelines for economic action, that is alternatives and room to manoeuvre within a steady-state economy.     

论新增长理论与中国经济增长质量的提高

西方新增长理论 ,又称为内生增长理论 ,是在 2 0世纪年代 ,以罗默 (PualM .Romer,1 986)和卢卡斯 (RobertE .Lucas,Jr.1 988)等人为代表的经济学家 ,在对新古典理论重新思考的基础上 ,得出一种共同的基本结论 ,即经济增长是经济系统内生因素作用的结果 ,而不是外部力量推动的结果。一方面内生的技术创新是经济长期增长的源泉 ,而劳动分工程度和专业化人力资本的积累水平是决定技术创新水平高低的主要因素。另一方面 ,政府实施的某些经济决策对一国的经济增长具有重要影响。在中国发展的新阶段 ,正是实施三步走战略的关键阶段。充分认识中国经济增长过程中的现实状况 ,保证经济长期、快速、健康地增长最主要是着力提高经济增长的质量。因此 ,借鉴西方的新增长理论 ,加强政府在推进技术进步、人力资本积累以及合理调整产业结构等方面作用 ,对于确保中国小康目标的实现具有重大的现实意义     

集行业智慧促产业发展——访第一届银行卡专业委员会常务副主任、中国民生银行信用卡中心总裁杨科

中国银行业协会银行卡专业委员会(以下简称"银行卡专业委员会")的成立是中国银行卡产业的一件大事.正如第一届银行卡专业委员会主任、中国民生银行副行长毛晓峰所言,该组织的成立"不仅为银行卡行业提供了相互学习、共促发展的良好平台,还将进一步促进国内银行卡行业规范、有序竞争,对提升银行卡业务发展水平、推动国内银行卡产业全球化发展与竞争具有重要意义."     

Communities as informal regulators: new arrangements in industrial pollution control in Viet Nam

A number of studies in developing countries show that in the absence of strict environmental regulation and strong enforcement, communities have emerged as a new informal regulators. In Viet Nam local communities in some cases are successful in forcing industrial polluters to reduce pollution or to change production processes into more environmentally sound directions. New subpolitical arrangements are formed, involving innovative relations between communities, industrial polluters and state authorities. However, people living in the neighbourhood of industrial firms are often dependent on firms and local authorities in terms of economic and social benefits, potentially inhibiting these processes of informal regulation by communities. This paper analyses if and to what extent economic and social dependencies of communities from industrial firms in their vicinity play a role in hampering community involvement in environmental regulation.     

Thriving locally in the global economy

More and more small and midsize companies are joining corporate giants in striving to exploit international growth markets. At the same time, civic leaders worry about their communities' economic future in light of the impact of global forces on the operation and survival of business. How can communities retain local vitality yet still link their business to the global economy? Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter addresses that question in this classic HBR article, orginally published in 1995. To avoid a clash between international economic interests and local political interests, globalizing business must learn how to be responsive to the communities in which they operate, Kanter says. And communities must determine how to create a civic culture that will attract and retain footloose companies. The author surveyed five U.S. regions with direct connections to the global economy--Boston, Cleveland, Miami, Seattle, and the Spartanburg-Greenville region of South Carolina--to determine their business and civic leader's strategies for improving their constituent's quality of life. She identified ways in which the global economy can work locally by capitalizing on the resources that distinguish one place from another. Kanter argues that regions can invest in capabilities that connect their local populations to the global economy in one of three ways: as thinkers, makers, or traders. She points to the Spartanburg-Greenville region as a good example of a world-class makers, with its exceptional blue-collar workforce that has attracted more than 200 companies from 18 countries. The history of the economic development of this region is a lesson for those seeking to understand how to achieve world-class status and bring local residents into the world economy.     

Limits to the economy of knowledge and knowledge of the economy

In this essay, we explore the view that the growth of knowledge is a complex evolutionary process. We pay particular attention to the division of knowing in a knowledge economy, to the restless nature of knowledge and to the principle of variation and selection that makes the growth of knowledge an evolutionary phenomenon. The foundations for this discussion are located in Adam Smith's suggestion that the most fundamental aspect of the division of labour is the division of knowledge, and the consequential existence of roundabout and combinatorial ways of producing knowledge. This notion of roundaboutness also connects our discussion with the writings of the Austrian school of economists. It is this school of thought that has come closest to understanding the open-ended and evolutionary nature of knowledge based economic activity. The theory of complex adaptive systems, when applied to the economic and social domain, has enabled us to confront the distinction between knowledge and the institution of social understanding. We map the difference between knowledge, which is private, and understanding, which is social. If knowledge is a characteristic of individuals, understanding then becomes an emergent phenomenon arising from the interaction between individuals in specific contexts. Understanding has boundaries it has components that possess great heterogeneity and is sustained by the connections of information flow. It is a socially distributed process whose growth is dependent on a systemic context, on the way a given set of individuals interact to share information and thus to further develop their idiosyncratic knowledge. Recognising that understanding is necessarily distributed leads to the insight that economic activity, which is necessarily social, depends on shared understandings, that is to say, correlated knowledge. This provides a clue as to the unpredictability and unevenness of knowledge accumulation, and of course the unpredictability of capitalism as a knowledge driven system.     

世界经济的控制权

GDP总量已达世界第三的中国,下一步经济发展面临的主要挑战是什么？在笔者看来,主要的挑战不是来自外部政治压力,不是来自国际竞争。也不是来自技术与市场封锁,而是来自于中国的内部问题,尤其是不可持续的经济发展方式。