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Nation states, asserts the world-renowned business strategist
Kenichi Ohmae, are dinosaurs waiting to die. In this profoundly important book
Ohmae argues that not only have nation states lost their ability to control exchange
rates and protect their currencies, but they no longer generate real economic
activity. As a result, he maintains, they have already forfeited their
role as critical participants in the global economy. Once efficient engines of
wealth creation, nation states today have become inefficient engines of wealth
distribution, whose fates are increasingly determined by economic choices made
elsewhere.
Ohmae contends that four great forces -- capital,
corporations, consumers, and communication -- have combined to usurp the economic
power once held by the nation state. In the first full-scale analysis of this
global phenomenon, Ohmae explains exactly how communications now control the movement
of capital and corporations across national borders, how demanding consumers determine
the flow of goods and services, and how harmful government policies are increasingly
disciplined by the actions of informed consumers, profit-seeking corporations,
and currency markets.
Old habits die hard and the habits
of power die hardest of all. While governments cling to jingoistic celebrations
of nationhood that place far more value on the welfare of their citizens, Ohmae
reveals that within their borders a revolution has been born. He documents how
affluent economic zones forming natural "business units" have arisen
throughout the world, bringing real, concrete improvements in the quality of life.
These new engines of prosperity, which Ohmae calls region states, have emerged,
for example, between San Diego and Tijuana, Singapore and parts of Malaysia and
Indonesia, Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, and Hong Kong and the adjacent portion
of the Chinese mainland. He describes how these region states, each inhabited
by 5 to 20 million people, have closer links to other region states in the global
economy than to their "host" nations, and constitute essential growing
markets for the goods and services of global corporations.
Ohmae
concludes that the emergence of the region state changes deeply and forever the
global logic that defines how corporations operate and how the governments of
nation states understand their proper role in economic affairs. Managers and policymakers
must remember that people came first, and borders came afterwards. This masterful
analysis will redefine the workings of the global economy for generations to come.
Kenichi Ohmae, a former Senior Partner of McKinsey &
Company, has counseled major corporations and governments on their international
strategies and operations for 20 years. Widely recognized as one of today's top
business gurus, he is the author of the highly acclaimed Triad Power and
The Borderless World. He lives in Tokyo.
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