Globalization: A New Urgency for Building Digital Communities – Communicate or die

"The prize of the future will be the ability to attract, nurture and retain the type of bright and creative people who generate new inventions, world-class products and the finance and marketing plans to support them."

The message is becoming clear: rather than economic stimulus tools such as subsidies for footloose corporations and taxpayer-underwritten industrial parks, the successful cities and metro areas of the 21st century will be stimulated by their attractiveness to young, talented people. The traditional economic development push to lure big corporations and build large factories was characteristic of the 20th century economy. The prize of the future will be the ability to attract, nurture and retain the type of bright and creative people who generate new inventions, world-class products and the finance and marketing plans to support them.

Cities across the world have been struggling to reinvent themselves for the new, post-industrial economy and society foreshadowed in the 1960s by economists Fritz Malcop and Marc Porat (1) and by sociologist Daniel Bell (2). In their efforts to prepare themselves for the 21st century, many communities focused on updating their data infrastructure to accommodate the needs of an age in which information is the most valuable commodity. Now the stakes have gotten higher.

December 2005 By John M. Eger

Full Story: http://www.govtech.net/digitalcommunities/story.php?id=97701