Page 209 - The Drucker Lectures

190 [ The Drucker Lectures

Altogether, the growing tensions in mainland Asia will force
these countries into pushing exports to the West. But whether
China and its neighbors in mainland Asia can, in turn, also be-
come major customers of the West has yet to be seen. One thing
is certain, however: The truly decisive event in the world econ-
omy in the next 10 or 15 years will not be what happens in the
developed world but what happens in China.
Now let me switch to something quite different: Is there a world
economy? The answer is both yes and no. Economically, the world
is becoming steadily more integrated. But politically the world is
more likely to splinter. There will be more Slovakias seceding
from the Czechs. When communism collapsed, the areas housing
nearly half of the Soviet population turned themselves into inde-
pendent countries. And it is anybody’s guess whether there will be
a united Canada in 10 years. Will there still be a Belgium?
The fact is that modern information has made global splin-
tering much easier. There is no longer any real advantage in
peacetime to being a very large country. That means that there
is going to be increased competition for all of us in the developed
countries, and very often from countries we’ve barely heard of. In
that sense, we have a global economy. And it requires that you
know about it, pay attention to it, and act in contemplation of a
global economy—even if your own market is purely local.
The last thing to say is that you, the executive, will have to
take charge of the information you need. Most of us are swamped
with data. Yet very few have any information. Most of the data
we now get may actually do more harm than good. In many
organizations, the computer has made management less compe-
tent because all the data it gets are inside data, whether from the
accounting system or from the management information system.
And this has aggravated the tendency, especially in large compa-
nies, for executives to be preoccupied with what happens inside
their company.