The latest Decoding The New Economy interview feature Laurel Barsotti, Director of Business Development at the City of San Francisco discussing how the city refound it’s entrepreneurial mojo.
A notable point about Laurel’s interview is how she has similar views to Barcelona’s Deputy Mayor Antoni Vives about the importance of industry to San Francisco.
For some time it was an article of faith in the Anglo-Saxon world that the west had become post-industrial economy where manufacturing was something dispatched to the third world and rich white folk could live well selling each other real estate and managing their neighbours’ investment funds.
“Opening doors for each other” was how a US diplomat described this 1980s vision according to former BBC political correspondent John Cole.
It’s clear now that vision was flawed and now leaders are having to think about where manufacturing, and other industries, sit in their economic plans.
Barcelona’s and San Francisco’s governments have understood this, but others are struggling to realise this is even a problem as they hang on to dreams of running their economies on tourism, finance and flogging their decidedly ordinary college courses to foreign students.
For some political and business leaders this is a challenge to their fundamental economic beliefs. It’s going to be interesting to see how they fare in the next twenty years.