How America Can Create Jobs

By Andy Grove, of Intel & Lecturer in Management Stanford Graduate School of Business

This is an interesting article discussing the need to recreate the scaling process in the U.S., i.e. nurture the start-up, fund it, but then rather than expatriate the manufacturing abroad, keep the jobs domestic. In this way not only is there more U.S. employment but we can also harness and nurture the scaling and innovation that comes with being an integral part of an effective ecosystem in which technology know-how can accumulate, experience can build on experience, and closer relationships can be forged between suppliers and customers. The author cites examples of the job machine (scaling and innovation process) breaking down in computers, and in alternative energy. Photovoltaics, a U.S. invention, are now primarily manufactured in China. “U.S. employment in the making of photovoltaic films and panels is perhaps 10,000—just a few % of estimated worldwide employment.” Not only have we foregone a large number of jobs, we risk breaking “the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today’s “commodity” manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry.”
 
This is a must read!:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/knowledgebase/cgi-bin/2010/07/26/andy-grove-how-america-can-create-jobs/
 

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