Speaker 1: Brian Barton, and to elaborate on what we’re saying now and address a popular issue right now, what can US firms, what strategies can US firms adopt to succeed in competing against low wage countries?
Jack Swain: I work at Hewlett Packard, I’m vice president for process excellence for HP, which means that I work with people, 150,000 people around the company to help them be more effective at doing the work that they are doing or to get better results and it’s the same way over time. By background I’m an engineer by training, have worked in many functional areas though in three different companies, Xerox Co., Cummins Engine Co., and now Hewlett Packard, so I’m old enough to have been in a lot of places by now, and have some familiarity with different approaches. So in terms of what can US companies do to succeed in competing with so called low wage countries? I think the first perspective that we need to take is: what does it mean to be a US company? And from the perspective of HP, we’re organized in the US, but we’re really a global company, we have as many employees and as much business in Europe and in Middle eastern Africa as we do in the Americas, and some of the countries in Asia are growing much more rapidly then some of the other parts of the world, and we look at ourselves as a global citizen, and we have operations, and we invest in people because they are a part of the HP global citizen worldwide, 150,000 people in all those organizations, and I really want to build on the point that we’ve made earlier about understanding different cultures. The way that we can compete most effectively as a US company, and by the way I’d say the same thing if I were sitting in India, where I was earlier in the year, is to pay attention to cultural differences so that we understand the cultural differences in different markets that we’re in. But then to leverage what we do best, and recognize what other may do best, and let them leverage that, so we have partners in other countries that can leverage capability that they have, but they can do significantly better then we did. I hadn’t heard the 4H factor so that is interesting, I can believe that. So I’d say that, in summary, about what we can do to compete effectively against low wage countries is to first of all decide what’s your identity of your company, are you a US company or are you a global company that happens to be here, and that makes it a big difference on how you look at your stakeholders and what you’re going to do. Number two, pay a lot of attention to your education now and you’ll get to cultural experiences and grow your cultural sensitivity, and there are many, many ways to do that without leaving the country. Third, look at what your company does better then other and focus on that, and make that the key point of, the critical point of your strategy, and allow other to do that, and it will help the partnerships on that basis