Europe’s need for emerging economies

By yohanes budiyanto (http://www.flickr.com/photos/joe-joe/2303992129/) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Jakarta, Indonesia (By yohanes budiyanto, CC BY 2.0)

Recently we have seen across Europe a substantial amount of unrest generated by the influx of refugees from Syria, Libya and many other world regions where conflicts or simply poor government drives people away. Europeans tend to be relatively friendly to newcomers as long as they genuinely are fleeing from danger or distress. However, we see a shrinking support for allowing larger quantities of refugees to enter, with the argument that we cannot absorb so many people in our local economies.

 

Of course, reality is harsh, and truly the limits of absorption capacity of our societies are stretched and sometimes exceeded. On the other hand, we feel that often Europeans do not realise how much we need the rest of the world to prosper and grow, if we want to continue the level of quality of life that we generally have (or at least can aspire to) in our richer and well-organised part of the world. Population growth in the EU is flat or even negative, the age distribution is shifting to more and more elderly people, while at the same time more and more young people go to university expecting to land an attractive highly paid job when they graduate.

 

Trends towards our future

In our work with major multinational industries, we see that the smartest of them are taking emerging economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America very seriously. This goes well beyond the decades long landslide of China growing into an economic superpower. The main markets of the world in 20-30 years will include India, Nigeria, Pakistan and other emerging economies that today have limited impact, but which will grow into major forces over the next decades. Truly understanding these upcoming markets will require a multi-cultural workforce, and open mind and global thinking.

 

Positioning through alliances

We are presently supporting top universities from a leading EU country and from an emerging economy to develop a long term R&I joint venture. Both universities stand to gain a lot from their joint initiative, and by no means does the more advanced university act out of philanthropy. The university in the developed country simply realises that it needs to connect deeply with emerging economies in order to survive the next couple of decades. They are trying to maximise the Value they create from Science and Technology – and Bax & Company is supporting them every step of the way.

 

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