Stanford University Press Blog

The Future of Work Is Already Here

The impact of the pandemic and the key questions we should be asking

JASON WINGARD 

Used with permission. Credit: Ryan Brandenberg, Temple University

 

The Future Is Now 

It’s no secret that institutions of higher education and businesses have been grappling with the impact automation and digital technologies have had on the way people learn and work. And, although robots and artificial intelligence have played a role in rethinking and reshaping our approach to work, a phenomenon even more disruptive accelerated the arrival of the future of work: the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Prior to the pandemic, efforts to keep pace with innovation and disruption affecting nearly every facet of workplace productivity provided the opportunity for organizations to assess their ability to prepare for, and evolve with, the changing employment landscape. And then, in the blink of an eye, that “opportunity” turned into an “imperative.” 

Seemingly instantaneously, employers and employees were required to adapt to new technologies and new ways of working. The swiftness with which many organizations adapted to these changes demonstrated the necessity of a nimble workforce that is prepared to both meet current demand and anticipate and adapt to future change.

The Great Skills Gap » explores the shifting of the skills and preparation that employers need from their talent pool, and how both higher education and business can collaborate to keep pace to support a workforce that is technically proficient and exceptionally agile in their capacity to think and act creatively and quickly learn new skills. As we all learned throughout the pandemic, agility, creativity and adaptability—along with a growing set of technical skills—are and will remain essential to being a successful worker in the future of work.

Your Table Of Contents is a Marketing Tool

Embracing the flexibility of an under-utilized resource

Richard Narramore, Executive Editor

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

Your table of contents is not just an outline–it is an overlooked, underappreciated marketing and sales tool.  An editor will use your table of contents to evaluate your book proposal. They will share it with marketing colleagues and their Editorial Board, to rally support. Your publisher’s sales team will share it with retailers. Marketers will post it to Amazon and online stores around the world. Foreign language rights managers will use it to persuade publishers in China, Germany, or Brazil to translate your book into their language.

But you also want a captivating table of contents for your most important audience–your reader. Readers deciding whether or not to buy your book will look at the cover and the marketing copy, and perhaps skim chapter 1, but they will also browse your table of contents. Will it grab their interest or not? I’m a business book editor, and when I’m working with an author, I ask them to picture a browsing reader scanning the table of contents online or in a bookstore, deciding whether or not the book is worth their valuable time. A book I published called The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy received a rave review in the New York Times, including praise for the author’s “beguilingly titled subchapters.” That’s the response we want from a reader browsing the table of contents!

Creating a polished, marketing-oriented, reader-friendly table of contents, is a way of getting to know your audience better.

So I encourage you to put on your marketing/copywriter hat for an hour and finesse your chapter titles. This requires a mental shift, since you have been thinking about the internal coherence and narrative flow of your argument. You don’t want frothy chapter titles that undercut the scholarly rigor of your work.  But you strongly believe in your book and you care about connecting deeply with your reader and their concerns. Think about which of your book’s topics, ideas, claims, and themes your readers care about most. Whatever those are…they should show up, stated clearly, in your chapter titles. 

Writing Unbreakable

A Q&A with authors Bradley L. Kirkman and Adam C. Stoverink about building resilient teams.

BRADLEY L. KIRKMAN and ADAM C. STOVERINK

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay

 

1. What made you want to write this book?

We started thinking about the concept of team resilience over 10 years ago. We are teams researchers, and so we’re always thinking about ways to take a concept that applies to individuals and then see how it might work in teams. For individual resilience, there has been over 50 years of research on what makes individual people resilient. For example, people are more able to bounce back from adversity when they are more optimistic, have higher self-esteem, have social support, and are more satisfied with their lives. So, the key question driving our research on team resilience was: is it enough just to pick a bunch of resilient individuals, put them on a team together, and then just sit back and watch the team resilience magic happen? Or, is it something more than that?

What we found in our research is that, of course, when building a team you’d like to have everyone on the team be highly resilient individuals. That’s not going to hurt team resilience. However, that’s not enough. And the reason is that collective resilience is more than just individual resilience added up. That is, team resilience emerges over time based on exchanges and processes that occur between team members. In other words, team resilience can rise and fall based on the quality of exchanges team members have between one another.

In the end, we found that team resilience is made possible by four key team resources:

• a moderate amount of team confidence (too little and teams will crack under the pressure of adversity; and, too much and teams won’t take the time to prepare for adversity);

Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX, and the lessons of Bernie Madoff and the Crisis.

What do two of the biggest fraud cases in U.S. history have in common?

COLLEEN P. EREN

Left: Bernie Madoff's mug shot by U.S. Department of Justice, Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons

Right: February 2022— Sam Bankman-Fried delivering testimony at the U.S.  Senate. By US Senate, CSPAN, Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons

 

The precipitous fall of Samuel Bankman-Fried (SBF) from his status as a crypto wunderkind and the world’s youngest billionaire, splashed across the covers of Fortune and the Forbes’ “400” edition, to having his in-jail nutrition and pastimes in a sordid Bahamas jail reported by Bloomberg, is a story that rapidly claimed widespread public attention and commentary. Indicted on eight counts of conspiracy and criminal activity related to wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, violation of campaign finance laws, as well as facing civil charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, SBF is alleged to have, from the very beginning of his establishment of the cryptocurrency trading platform, FTX, in 2019, deceived equity investors, and channeled and commingled billions in customers’ funds illegally to his other business, the quantitative crypto-hedge fund Alameda Research, founded in 2017. With those funds, SBF purchased swanky real estate in the Bahamas, made risky speculative investments and large political donations, loaned himself and other executives large amounts of money, repaid Alameda’s debts, and even bailed out other distressed crypto firms. In total, about 8 billion dollars of FTX customers’ funds are thought to have been lost in the swindle by SBF and his accomplices.

Almost immediately, along with the details of SBF’s fraud and titillating accounts of his life in the Bahamas, came comparisons with and allusions to perhaps the most notorious white-collar criminal of the 21^st century, Bernard Madoff. CNN juxtaposed footage of Madoff’s arrest alongside that of SBF, asking if SBF was the “new Madoff” in an interview with the federal prosecutor. In his first network interview, George Stephanopolous levelled at him “A lot of people look at you and see Bernie Madoff.” #BernieMadoff trended in tweets about SBF in November 2022, and Google Trends in January 2023 showed that the top two related rising “breakout” queries to the search term “Bernie Madoff” were “FTX” and “Sam Bankman-Fried" respectively. Yet, the comparison to Madoff, in terms of the nature, length of, modus operandi, and motive, is largely inapposite. Important differences (and similarities) abound.

Perhaps most significant among these differences, in spite of the loose throwing around of the term to describe SBF’s fraud: it is not a Ponzi scheme. To call it such—as has been the case in non-broadstreet outlets—stretches the term so that it loses its definitional clarity. Madoff’s 17.5 billion Ponzi, the largest in history, like all such classic schemes regardless of size, involved paying ‘returns’ to investors in a fake investment advisory business using funds from other investors in the same scheme that were merely deposited in a personal Chase bank account. It was a legerdemain that was possible as long as new institutional investors and individual ‘marks’ could be obtained. SBF is accused of misappropriating deposits from FTX customers to plug holes for Alameda among other purposes, commingling funds between the two businesses, but this is more readily described as embezzlement. His selling equity investors on a responsible business that was anything but responsible, was also fraudulent, but not a Ponzi. On none of the legal documents from government agencies like the Department of Justice (DOJ) or Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does the term appear, unlike in Madoff’s case. Among the other important differences is the modus operandi: Madoff's scheme, as with many Ponzis, was an affinity fraud targeting members of communities to whom he had personal connections, a characteristic not seen in SBF’s crime, which was much shorter-lived, surviving only a few years, compared to Madoff’s fraud, which by some accounts stretched back to the 1970s, an almost 40-year scheme. And last, while Madoff in his interviews for my book Bernie Madoff and the Crisis: The Public Trial of Capitalism », expressed being motivated to begin the Ponzi to not disappoint his wealthiest clients, some have suggested that SBF’s allegiance to the philanthropic philosophy of effective altruism might have been his motivator.

Academy of Management 2022

 

 

 

New Books and New SUP Authors

Recent Award Winners 

AOM Resources

 

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New Books and New SUP Authors

Announcing new books, published in the last year. We’re offering 30% off these and other recent SUP Business titles with discount code S22XAOM-FM through our virtual exhibit ».

For the best shipping rates on orders outside of North America use the discount code S22XAOM-FM at our international distributor, CAP.

Writing The AI Marketing Canvas

A Q&A with authors Raj Venkatesan and Jim Lecinski

RAJ VENKATESAN and JIM LECINSKI

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

What Inspired you to write The AI Marketing Canvas?

AI and machine learning are shuffling the deck on every level and in every category, just like digital and big data did a few decades back. This seismic shift will require Marketers to develop new thinking, new skill sets, new strategies and systems that will require the organizational culture to evolve as well.

Accordingly Marketers today are inundated with advice and information about AI and machine learning capabilities from trade books, podcasts, trade journals, opinion pieces posted on social media platforms, and more.  The problem is, most of this material on AI and Machine Learning being offered to marketing leaders either focuses on the technology itself from a computer science perspective or on the high concept implications of AI on society.  Further, much of the materials generated are vendor-driven and don’t provide what marketers need to move forward. 

Therefore we were inspired to write, “The AI Marketing Canvas” to provide marketers with answers to these two key questions: (1) How should modern marketers be thinking about artificial intelligence and machine learning? and (2) How should marketers be developing a strategy and plan to implement AI into their marketing toolkit?

Why Become a Professor?

Andy Hoffman reflects on purpose and why we need engaged scholars now more than ever

ANDREW J. HOFFMAN

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

We are proud to present an adapted excerpt from The Engaged Scholar: Expanding the Impact of Academic Research in Today’s World» by Andrew J. Hoffman.

 

Why did you choose to become a professor?

When I feel myself losing track of the purpose or meaning behind my work, I return to this simple question. And my answer is equally simple – I want my research, teaching, and outreach to have a positive imprint on the world around me. Citation counts, A-level publications, and an h-index pale in comparison to that simple outcome. 

Yet our reward systems elevate these metrics and they don’t come close to capturing my deeper purpose.  So, that leaves it to me to decide what is valuable and important in my academic pursuits.  I know that that kind of independence is hard to assert, especially when you are early in your academic career.  But as you advance, you will have more freedom to exercise your independence.  For me, I keep in mind the challenge from Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State marine ecologist and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), that academic scholars must abide by “scientists’ social contract” – that they have an obligation to provide a service to society, to give value for the money provided by public funding, government grants, and tuition revenue.[1]It is an obligation that is born out of both a societal need for the expertise that academics possess and a recognition of the responsibilities that come with the privileged life that academics lead.

I am writing this at a particularly precarious time.  The Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on our lives and our livelihoods.  People are suffering and society needs answers.  Yet many people are turning away from science, distrusting its conclusions and its motivations, and even questioning its assessment that the virus is real.  This is happening because we are now immersed in an array of confusing and conflicting messages that question facts, blur the line between opinion and fact, and dismiss formerly respected sources of information as merely political interests pushing a partisan agenda.  This, according to the RAND Corporation, is the existential crisis of our time.[2] If we do not improve the scientific literacy of our public and political discourse, how can we make sense of the challenging issues we face?  You can’t set policy or make informed decisions about nanotechnology, stem-cell research, nuclear power, climate change, vaccines and autism, genetically modified organisms, endocrine disruption, gun violence, or Covid-19 if you do not agree on a common set of facts to ground the conversation.

Understanding Management as a Calling

Examining the purpose of a corporation

 

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

This essay originally ran on the Corporate Eco Forum. Republished with permission.

 

Ask any business student (or anyone for that matter) what the purpose of the corporation is, and they will likely parrot back that it is to “make money for its shareholders.” The prevalence of this belief is coming under much needed scrutiny within business circles and among business students.  But it is not gaining enough attention within business education and that needs to change, something I hope to address in a new book, Management as a Calling: Leading Business, Serving Society ».

 

The call for change within business practice

The Business Roundtable and World Economic Forum have both issued statements redefining the purpose of the corporation as one that “serves society at large…supports communities…pays its fair share of taxes…acts as a steward of the environmental and material universe for future generations.” Black CEO Lawrence Fink sent a letter to CEOs  telling them that they have a responsibility not only to deliver profits, but also to make “a positive contribution to society.” Even former GE CEO Jack Welch called shareholder primacy “the dumbest idea in the world,” adding that “shareholder value is a result, not a strategy … Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.” This not a new idea; it is just one that has just fallen out of fashion. Peter Drucker, for example, argued in the 1950s that “the purpose of a company is to create a customer;” profits are one metric of how well the company performs this purpose but ultimately, he argued, “the business enterprise…exists for the sake of the contribution which it makes to the welfare of society as a whole.”  It is time to bring these ideas back, turning more recent aspirational statements into management practice.  And one way to do that is change the way we approach the education of the corporate leader.

The need for change in business training

Business leaders must learn about the basics of business management. But they must also consider the vast power that they may someday possess to shape and guide our society, and learn the responsibility to wield that power carefully. Tomorrow’s business leaders must start thinking critically about the role of business in society, their role as a manager in guiding those businesses and the overall system in which they will practice their craft – capitalism.

In that pursuit, they should be taught to look deep inside themselves to consider management as a calling in a similar spirit of service that we use to train doctors and lawyers —one that moves away from the simple pursuit of a career for private personal gain and towards a vocation that is based on a higher set of values about leading commerce and serving society.  It is about connecting your career with your values and purpose. As corporate attorney James Gamble writes “power needs to be constrained by conscience.”

This shift in focus is needed now more than ever, at a time when capitalism is in crisis. One symptom of that crisis is income inequality, which is growing to epidemic proportions not seen since 1929. Before the Covid crisis, 40% of Americans could not pull together $400 for an emergency; 78% lived paycheck to paycheck; 44% earned about $18,000 per year; and 42% had saved less than $10,000 for retirement. Today, we are in that emergency and a vast portion of the American public is in serious trouble. A second symptom lies in our natural environment as global greenhouse gases are at their highest ever level and show no signs of declining, resulting in climatic changes whose costs to the US economy alone could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year in lost labor productivity, declining crop yields, food shortages, early deaths, property damage, water shortages, air pollution, flooding, fires, and more. The market is threatening our way of life, both environmentally and socially, in ways that are unprecedented.

Academy of Management Conference 2021

 

 

 

To capture some of the spirit of gathering together in the AOM exhibit hall, we offer this virtual space, showcasing our new authors, award-winning books, and highlights from the last year of Business at SUP.

 

New Books and New SUP Authors

Recent Award Winners 

AOM Resources

 

---

New Books and New SUP Authors

Announcing new books, published in the last year. We’re offering 30% off these and other recent SUP Business titles with discount code S21XAOM-FM through our virtual exhibit ».

For the best shipping rates on orders outside of North America use the discount code S21XAOM-FM at our international distributor, CAP.

 

 

SUP is proud to present Ecosystem Edge » authors Arnoud De Meyer and Peter J. Williamson in conversation with SUP Senior Editor Steve Catalano.

 

Teaming up

Coronavirus brings partner ecosystems to the fore, says Peter Williamson of Cambridge Judge Business School.

PETER J. WILLIAMSON

Free for commercial use. Image has been cropped. Via Pixabay.

 

Commenting on the challenge of coronavirus, Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier summed up the new reality perfectly: “No single entity covers the medical, economic, and political elements required to produce a vaccine for all”.

The same holds true as manufacturers such as Ford Motor Co.  try to overcome the technical, logistical and regulatory hurdles of moving from cars to supplying ventilators in the tens of thousands. As expert as companies are in their specific fields, they need to collaborate with other companies and individuals to contribute in new and vital ways.

Ford is helping 3M scale up production of its air-purifying respirators and collaborating with GE Healthcare to boost production of a simplified version of GE’s existing ventilator design.

This underlines a crucial point in today’s interconnected economy and society: Whether it is keeping their supply chains moving, redeploying their staff to new roles, or pivoting their business models to online sales, companies across the world are recognising the critical nature of collaborators – the quality and depth of ecosystem partners.  Innovative responses require access to the capabilities of such an ecosystem of partners, drawing on know-how and capacity in a wide variety of related industries. This is the topic of a new book, Ecosystem Edge », I have co-authored with Arnoud De Meyer of Singapore Management University.

Why Permanent Revolution?

The heart of modernity and capitalism

WYATT WELLS

The Barrow Hematite Steel Company by unknown - 1877 or earlier. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

 

The inspiration for Permanent Revolution came from O. Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War, which describes that conflict as a struggle between different versions of “modernity.”  This term connotes the immense transformation of the human condition over the last three hundred years, encompassing not only the extraordinary expansion of wealth, but revolutionary advances in health and education. With modernity also came immense moral progress such as the abolition of slavery.  A French peasant born in 1600 might well have had more in common with an Egyptian peasant of the Old Kingdom than with a twentieth-century Parisian worker.  Though most recognize the phenomenon, few agree on its causes and essentials.  Why did history, starting in northwestern Europe in the seventeenth century, take such a dramatic turn?  Which developments associated with modernity are causal and which are symptomatic?  Did rapid urban growth drive the process, as people moved to new communities and lost touch with traditional ones, or was it a result, as economic change concentrated the work force geographically?  As I wrestled with these questions, I became convinced that capitalism is central the phenomenon.

Capitalism is an economic system, not a religious, political, philosophical, or aesthetic one—the idea of a capitalist opera or religious service is ridiculous. Yet capitalism’s ongoing reorganization of economic life keeps society as a whole in constant flux.

If possible, the word “capitalism” conceals more disagreement than “modernity.”  The level of discourse is often low, even among intellectuals.  Capitalism is part of the fabric of life in Europe, North America, and much of East Asia, and analyzing something that we take for granted is difficult.  Many socialists identify capitalism with greed and exploitation, as if these did not stain every page of human history, capitalist or otherwise.  Economists and other academics often conflate it with free markets, though these existed in Ancient Rome and Classical China, societies no serious historian considers capitalist.  Students of business discuss the distinctions between Japanese, German, and American capitalism in great detail, glossing over what qualifies these all as capitalist in the first place.

An Overview of Organizations for People

Valuing kind leadership in an increasingly cynical world.

WILLIAM F. BAKER

Free for commercial use via Pixabay.

 

Many have hypothesized that the world we live in is getting angrier and meaner. Some say that it’s the pressure of the times to survive in a globally competitive world. Others say it’s how we communicate—no longer face-to-face—allowing for less civilized communication and more nastiness.  Simultaneously, the lionizing of the “strongman,” killer boss and the belief that the bottom line is the only measure has pushed our companies into places of profit over people.

In our new book, Organizations for People, published by Stanford University Press, Industrial Psychologist Dr. Michael O’Malley and I make the case that these ideas are not necessarily true. In fact, the research demonstrates that kind leadership is beneficial in creating a contented workplace and even a positive bottom line. We have closely examined 21 companies in various businesses all across the country to prove our point.

As a country we are slowly losing the social, human nourishment we require for our happiness and well-being. When managing large commercial broadcast businesses, I soon realized that when hiring a person, we were also hiring a family.

Our review begins with a Forward by Rachel Moore, CEO of the Music Center of Los Angeles, which employs two thousand people. Rachel is a former ballet dancer who regretfully stated that she began her work life around men who expected her to keep her ideas to herself. However, today she manages a workforce where employees are measured not only by what they say and accomplish, but how they do it, with ethics, kindness, tolerance and openness. We show that business in pursuit of money alone is more often less civil and even less successful over the long haul. Seemingly in agreement with this idea, CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, speaking for many of the biggest companies in America at the Business Roundtable, stated that business leaders should commit to balancing the needs of shareholders with customers, employees, suppliers and local communities. This recommendation comes at a good time, based on a recent survey which found that only 20% of the workforce says they are “flourishing¹.”

A New Narrative on Trade

Behind the noise of techlashes and trade wars, the next era of globalization arises.

KATI SUOMINEN

Free for commercial use via Pixabay.

 

In Washington and on campaign trails, trade and technology are evil twins spreading worry and anxiety. Trade is in a state of war, big tech is ending our privacy, and AI overlords are stealing our jobs. Yet behind the cacophony of tweets on tariffs and techlashes is important policy progress on the most dynamic area of trade – digital trade. And on the ground floor of commerce, technologies such as ecommerce, next generation payments, blockchain, AI, additive manufacturing, and 5G are revolutionizing how companies make, move and market goods and services – and fundamentally reshaping how we think about globalization and its benefits. In my new book Revolutionizing World Trade, I show how a new narrative on trade is emerging – one that businesses already live and more governments must champion.

Let’s start with the good news. On October 7, as the U.S. and China readied to restart their agonized trade talks, U.S. Trade Representative announced the signing of the U.S.-Japan Digital Trade Agreement that echoes the digital trade chapter of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) signed almost a year ago. The deals commit partners to free flow of data across borders; bar tariffs on digital content crossing borders, such as  videos, music and software; and ensure online platforms are not liable for content their users post, a long-standing U.S. policy that has propelled the American online economy.

The spirit of America’s two digital deals contrasts with the European Union’s stringent data privacy and online liability rules, waves of data localization policies around the world, and the proliferation of the so-called Netflix taxes levied on digital sales by such governments national capitals in Europe to Southeast Asia, U.S. states, and Canadian and Argentine provinces.

Are You Playing the Best Team?

Why collaboration and teamwork are essential to effective strategy execution.

KENNETH J. CARRIG and SCOTT A. SNELL

Free for commercial use via Pixabay.

 

We are proud to present an excerpt from Strategic Execution: Driving Breakthrough Performance in Business by Kenneth J. Carrig and Scott A. Snell.

As important as the CEO is, the top management team are the ones who initiate the game plan and have responsibilities for/to others who will ultimately make strategy happen. They are that key point of translation from strategic intent to operational directives. From above and below, we continually hear that it’s critical to get the team right. Yet it’s often a challenge to get the right people in the right roles. There needs to be a balance across the players in terms of knowledge of the business, knowledge of their functions, and ability to collaborate across the team.

Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden used to say, “I don’t play my five best; I play my best five.” Too many CEOs ascribe to a “best athlete” approach to their top teams, promoting high performers into senior roles both as a reward for achievement and an incentive for further contribution. In some cases, this creates an undeveloped “team of rivals” that breeds unhealthy competition and power plays among the most senior leaders. At a minimum, it can lead to those leaders developing fiefdoms, hoarding resources, and erecting silos. In addition to a lack of alignment, this creates dysfunction throughout the organization that impairs strategy execution. Better to find the right combination of leaders, even if this means not always promoting your stars. Ron Wallace, former president of UPS International, reinforced why, saying, “Nine times out of ten, teamwork trumps talent.”⁸

In our experience, where companies go wrong is simply assigning people to teams or accepting the teams that exist and expecting them to be ready, willing, and able to collaborate. This false belief is that any group of people within the organization can be assembled into a team where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

We’re not downplaying the importance of individual talent—it’s crucial—but the collaborative effect is critical as well. Let’s look at a couple of examples from SunTrust and Marriott, to illustrate these points and gain specific insights on how to groom the top team.

A Personal Experience

The Frederick Chavalit Tsao Story

FREDERICK CHAVALIT TSAO

Free for commercial use via Pixabay.

 

We are proud to present an excerpt from Quantum Leadership: New Consciousness in Business by Frederick Chavalit Tsao and Chris Laszlo.

IMC’s Origins

To fully understand my ideas of business sustainability and its stewardship of society, you have to look at the legacy I inherited. Each generation of my family evolved the business and shaped it to thrive in the particular era in which it found itself. But consistently applied across every era have been the three values of our founder, my great-grandfather: integrity, hard work, and prudence.

My great-grandfather Tsao Wa Chang was a sampan boatman in Shanghai at the turn of the twentieth century. One day, a drunken captain left a bag full of cash and documents in his boat. My great-grandfather could have kept it; it would have represented a fortune for such a poor boatman. Instead, he chose to seek out the captain, but his ship had already sailed. Months later, when the ship returned, my great-grandfather was waiting for the captain with the bag and its contents intact. It turned out that many of the documents were bills of lading and titles for cargo in a warehouse. The captain, a Westerner, was impressed with my great-grandfather’s integrity and gave him a large reward—a sum of money that would allow him to establish his own waterfront transport business. And so our family business was born.

With each succeeding generation, the business grew exponentially and often against all odds. Under my grandfather, Tsao Ying Yung, and my father, Frank W. K. Tsao, it expanded in shipping and real estate, through two world wars, and against the backdrop of China’s transition from empire to republic and thence to today’s more market-based socialist regime. As the Tsao family grew, members migrated from China across the globe—my grandfather died as a citizen of Brazil. By the time I was born, our business headquarters had moved from Shanghai to Hong Kong.

A Look Inside Biomedical Growth in Asia

Martin Kenney interviews Beyond Technonationalism author Kathryn Ibata-Arens

KATHRYN C. IBATA-ARENS and MARTIN KENNEY

 

Free for commercial use via Pixabay.

 

Martin Kenney: What made you write this book?

Kathryn Ibata-Arens:  Before we get started, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation about my book Beyond Technonationalism: Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Asia, and to be among the excellent books in your series Innovation and Technology in the World Economy. The path that led me to this book began in the mid-1990s starting as a Fulbright dissertation fellow at Tokyo University, followed by my first book on Japan’s high technology entrepreneurs. Since then, I have witnessed the struggles of entrepreneurs in Japan to obtain venture capital and invest in new product research and development. This is puzzling because Japan continues to lead the world in innovation, for example in patents and Nobel Prize worthy science and technology. Meanwhile, China, India, and even city-state Singapore have caught-up and in some cases leapfrogged over Japan in new technology entrepreneurship. The research started with the question: why is this?

 

MK: How would you define networked technonationalism for someone unfamiliar with the term?

KI: Thank you for asking. “Techno-nationalism” is the idea that a country’s national security depends on its ability to gain and maintain technology leadership in key sectors of the economy.