דבר העורך

King Solomon's Minds

Any alert observer of the performance of businesses and the economies of nations cannot help seeing that knowledge is the key that unlocks wealth. It is no accident that the great success stories of post World War II economic development -- Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Ireland, and Israel -- are nations with almost no natural resources. These days, while the world watches the development of India and China with wonder (and in some quarters, fear), it is important to understand what lies behind it. One way to ask what took so long. Both nations, which freed themselves from colonial and imperial chains at about the same time, spent the next three or more decades hobbling themselves with political and economic systems that tried to chain human capital to collective purposes, rather than releasing it to seek its own fortune. Something similar can be said of corporations; if there is one management lesson of the last few decades, it is that companies that value and encourage the contributions of individuals, as the Toyota Production System does, outperform companies run by heavy-handed bosses. "Work smarter, not harder," we're advised; but that is impossible if someone else is directing your every move.
Whether wealth is created by means of national entrepreneurship or corporate "intrapreneurship," it is the result of human creativity. We use the phrase "the sweat of your brow" to mean hard physical labor -- but it's the labor behind our brow that makes for progress.
That's why it is such a pleasure to write this note to congratulate STATUS on the occasion of its 200th issue. Like Harvard Business Review, whose articles translated into Hebrew have brought the management thinking to Israeli audiences, so Edna Pasher and her colleagues nave helped Israeli companies discover, develop, refine, and sell the real wealth of any people: the wealth of its minds, not of its mines.

Thomas A. Stewart
Editor and Managing Director
Harvard Business Review