votes: 70 global perspectives Jan Muehlfeit Chairman Europe Microsoft Corporation Photo Paul Pacey IN COOPERATION WITH LEADERS MAGAZINE
Leaders Magazine II 2009 71 As I continue to hear and read about details of the various economic stimulus packages that the government leaders worldwide are announcing to diminish the impact of the global economical crises one of my favorite quotes keeps popping up in my mind more and more It was Albert Einstein who once said that we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them and I increasingly feel a relevance of this brilliant quote to the way some countries have been trying to resolve this crisis so far Hopefully it is now obvious to everyone that the current situation presents a completely new challenge such that none of us has had to face during our lifetimes regardless of in which region of the world we live or how emerging or matured is the economy of any given country Both the political and business leaders should therefore realize that any incremental economical steps unfortunately even despite of how mind blowing the sizes of economic stimulus packages might be or down playing or shying away from the real reasons of why we got to this point will not succeed to tackle this crisis on the long term I am very glad that in addition to more announcements of economical injections the political leaders also start to recognize this fact U S President Mr Barack Obama has said in his inaugural speech that the current crisis is a consequence of greed and irresponsibility my friend Danny Thorniley Vice President of Economist’s Intelligence Unit in Vienna has even said that it is an outcome of greed and stupidity I personally believe that we really need to learn a big lesson from where got to and take a different more balanced approach both to resolving this challenge and the way we conduct business and govern our markets moving forward I certainly understand the need for immediate liquidity injections that the many governments were forced to provide to various financial institutions in the second half of 2008 in order to save citizens savings or insurance policies as well as the rationale of the additional broader economic stimulus packages However while these short term supportive actions will hopefully encourage an increase in the currently damaged consumer confidence and spend we should not let the short term market volatility to distract us from what need to remain our long term priorities the innovation creativity education and the skills for the 21st century At the same time the private and public sector also need to ensure together that the money that are currently being pumped into many of the economies really make an impact as soon as possible otherwise this would be like injecting a blood into a patient’s heart without the heart subsequently circulating it into and thru the body It is actually my belief that both private and public sector leaders and executives should be jointly accountable and measured for achieving this and that such approach would also help to restore a consumer confidence in the financial systems institutions and their governance The other lesson learnt from the crisis will be in countries willingness to open up their markets to foreign import I am a strong supporter of a free trade and hence I was both pleased and privileged to be invited to speak at the Forum on Services and Trade Liberalization in February in Prague which the Czech Government have organized as an official event of the Czech EU Presidency in cooperation with the European Commission When you look back over the past two decades you realize how significant progress has been made in free trade and liberalization and as a result the global trade has tripled since 1990 I therefore believe that despite of how serious it might get the current economical crisis cannot not be used as an excuse for any political and economical protectionism and a free trade should simply continue be given a free way Overall I believe that while both private and public sectors work hard to address and eventually resolve this crisis we really need to strike the right balance between the short term and long term measures That’s one of the reasons why I really appreciate that the European Commission even before the full impact of the crisis could have been felt or even predicted has declared the 2009 to be the European Year of Creativity and Innovation Microsoft is a proud supporter of this effort thru participation of Jean Philippe Courtois President of Microsoft International who has been named an official Ambassador for this key European initiative The European economical recovery package which has been put together in the late 2008 and announced last December is built around four main pillars people small medium enterprises energy environment and infrastructure These are indeed the right focus areas but as I have noted earlier European education needs to continue to be our priority as an on going underlying pillar Markets go up and markets go down GDPs grow and later they stall and eventually they start to grow again Those are all natural market developments and so sooner or later the current economical crisis will be resolved But in the decades to come Europe will continue to be faced with other critical challenges that will need to be addressed such as the aging of the European population Whether young or senior the Europeans will have to get used to real long life learning and continue to upgrade their skills to be able to succeed in the rapidly changing marketplace That’s why I think that the next Lisbon Agenda or whatever will be the name of the next agenda for Europe should be about Skills Growth as oppose to the Jobs Growth that we have been focused on over the past decade Finally I believe it is necessary for the European success to put an emphasis on how easy it is for the small and medium enterprises to do business here While SMEs are naturally faced with similar challenges like large enterprises such as the need for liquidity in their case the situation is even worse less venture capital and angel investors might prevent some of their great ideas from being brought to life That is why especially in their case the Governments need to renew their focus on decreasing the administrative burden put on them and generally decrease the time it takes to start and operate a new SME Recently I had the privilege to jointly open a new Innovation Center in Tallinn together with Mr Toomas Hendrik Ilves the President of Estonia I was amazed to hear from him that it now takes only 18 minutes to do all the administrative work associated with starting up a new company in Estonia When you compare this with the length of the very same process even in some of the founding members of the European Union it takes 4 6 weeks to establish a small business you clearly realize that such progressive approach should be a way to go for the rest of Europe too Newspapers are full of headlines about the economical crisis and its impacts and it is obvious why that’s the case However at some point we should also start to look beyond this crisis Therefore while from the media it may not feel that way I am convinced that the wind of change is already blowing and let us all make sure that when it comes to that point we individually and as a continent will eventually emerge from this challenge stronger than before Jan Muehlfeit Chairman Europe Microsoft Corporation českou verzi naleznete na www leadersmagazine cz WIND OF CHANGE IS BLOWING
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