If It Can Be Trained...

Friedman urges us to quickly abandon any illusions that America will naturally maintain an unassailable position of superiority in the global marketplace for products and ideas. As we stumble into this frightening new economic order, America faces hungrier and better educated global competitors who have the ambition, resources, and strategy to eat our lunch. We have helped turn the global economic tables—only to find out that they are no longer tilted in our favor. The only question now is what we are individually and collectively going to do about it. And specifically, what are the implications for workplace learning?

One implication seems ver clear: What can be trained, by definition, can be outsourced or off-shored—unless it involves a geographically “anchored” service, to use Friedman’s term. Food preparation, craft work, and nursing care come to mind. But what about the rest of us? Friedman suggests that America must collaborate to more rapidly invent new technologies and create new markets that we can exploit to our advantage—or risk falling further behind. So what and how must we learn in order to create ever-newer heights to the economic food chain?