Found at: http://www.competitiveness.org/article/articleprint/128/-1/23/
Message of the President
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The global crisis is already reaching real economies all over the world. Many important decisions are being taken by governments and international structures to minimize economic and social costs. There are also many lessons learned to avoid a repetition of this dramatic process of deterioration of the global economy. The temptation of withdrawing is high, it seems reasonable both in governmental and private sector, to come back to lower levels of spending and investment in R&D, innovation, internationalization, etc. However, the best strategy is probably the opposite. It is now, in these difficult times, when it is more necessary than ever to realize about the importance of investing in basic and applied research, innovation, and clusterization. The right decisions on these issues today are going to be the source of crucial competitive advantages tomorrow. This was the message of Mr. Sarkozy, just a few days ago, in the closing of the Conference on Innovation. This was also, at other scale, the message of Mr. Ibarretxe, President of the Basque Government, in the last Basque Conference on Innovation. And probably this is the message that is going to be sent by a vast majority of world leaders. This is the right way to tackle this crisis. At some extent the crisis, hard and distressing, can turn into an opportunity for the future. The crisis has come very quickly; the response has to be very quick too. It has evidenced plenty of unexpected risk and uncontrolled financial situations, so it is time to improve the whole financial system for the future. And it is the moment to demonstrate that innovation (not only technological, by the way) is not a “fetish” fad word, but a clear (and only) strategy for the world economy.
In TCI, we do believe that this is the perfect time and a splendid opportunity to work harder than ever in our core mission: To help countries, regions and practitioners to perform better, to be more competitive and knowledgeable about competitiveness, clusters and innovation. Our member base, bigger and more global than ever, can be instrumental and very influential to support the national or regional decisions to be implemented. Every TCI member should be committed to work in this sense as, of course, the Board of Directors in TCI is already committed.
We wish you a happy new year 2009! Difficult or not, we will have to apply all our collective wisdom to fight... and win!
Juan Manuel Esteban
TCI President