CHAPTER 100 Schumpeternomics: Gotta Keep on Learning1
I just returned from the summer meeting of the board of governors (on which I am a long-standing member) and the board of trustees of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in Makati, Manila. It celebrated its 45th Anniversary—first set up in 1968 with assistance from the Harvard Business School (HBS), which provided a tenured HBS professor as its inaugural president, and financial support from the Philippines’ business elite, including the likes of the Ayalas, Lopezs, and Del Rosarios, under the leadership of the venerable Washington Z. Sycip. To mark the occasion, AIM held its second Asian Business Conference in July 2014 against the backdrop of an emerging ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015. It was well attended by a wide cross-section of Asian businesses, research institutes, and universities, under the banner: “2015 Approaching: Priming for ASEAN Integration.” I spoke at the strategic session on banking and finance with particular focus on the need for Asia (and indeed, ASEAN) to keep on innovating to create a truly learning society, in order to maintain its competitive edge and remain relevant in an increasingly hostile and uncertain world. To survive, we just gotta keep on learning!
Technological Progress
I learned early as a Harvard graduate student in the 1970s, from no less than Nobel Laureate Robert Solow at MIT down the Charles River, that rising output and incomes can only come about in a sustained way ...