In June 2015, nearly 75 experienced leaders from across business, government, labor, academia, and media gathered at Harvard Business School to discuss a topic of increasing concern in America: How can our nation continue to remain competitive while also providing a path to prosperity for more citizens? This report highlights the group’s deliberations and summarizes the HBS research that was presented during the convening.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation recommends a new demand-driven approach—talent pipeline management—to close the skills gap. Extending lessons learned from innovations in supply chain management, this paper calls for employers to play a new and expanded leadership role as “end-customers” of education and workforce partnerships.
The market for middle-skills jobs—those that require more education and training than a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree—is consistently failing to clear. That failure is inflicting a grievous cost on the competitiveness of American firms and on the standard of living of American workers. How can business lead the charge to close the gap?
This paper looks at some of the issues firms moving large assembly operations back to the U.S. have faced, along with recommendations for more successful implementations.
By: Christian Ketels
A new framing of competitiveness clarifies the role of regions.
In many cases, once manufacturing capabilities go away, so does much of the ability to innovate and compete. Manufacturing, it turns out, really matters in an innovation-driven economy.
Some of the world’s most original thinkers explain the competitiveness challenge America faces and point the way forward.
Manufacturing matters to a nation’s economic prosperity, not because it is an important source of jobs (it currently represents only about 10% of US employment) but because manufacturing competence is often an integral part of innovation. By Professors Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih.
For decades, U.S. companies have been outsourcing manufacturing in the belief that it held no competitive advantage. That has been a disaster.