Page 264 - The Drucker Lectures

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The Future of the Corporation IV

2003

e are at the beginning—perhaps one-third of the way
Wthrough—a transition from a Western-dominated inter-
national economy to a world economy that is multicentered.
The present economic dominance of the United States is a
transitory phenomenon, and it is already passing very fast. I’m
not talking military, and I’m also not talking politics. In fact, the
more I think about it, the more I become convinced that one of
the major challenges ahead is the fact that politics, military might,
and economics no longer move in complete parallel but diverge.
And I think this is one of the major challenges that nobody truly
understands and for which we have no theory or practice.
If you look at the world economy you would say immediately
that it’s characterized by globalization, and you would be both
right and wrong. You would be right in one respect and wrong
in others.
Globalization so far is happening only with respect to in-
formation. Things there have indeed changed, and those high
school girls in Tokyo with their cell phones can and do reach
every satellite in the world. The only handicap is that they only
speak Japanese. And most of the satellites don’t. But theoreti-
cally, they can reach anybody in the world. And this is an im-
portant change because, historically, all autocratic regimes have
based themselves on control of information, and that no longer

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