I am listening to Thomas Friedman giving a lecture at MIT which has been posted on MIT’s OpenCourseWare. He is speaking largely about his new book, The World is Flat. It is a very inspiring lecture about the development of technology and how it has enabled the world to conduct its business in radically different ways. In ways that we can not even comprehend yet using our outdated economic measurements.
Around the 27 minute mark he says this:
“Because when you have a world this flat and individuals are this empowered to act on their own imagination, globally, what individuals imagine really matters. And therefore how well a university, a country, a state, a school enables and inspires an individual, I think, will be the greatest single competitive edge in the world that we are going into.”
To get the true meaning of the quote, you really need to listen to the lecture. I highly recommend it.