by Miriam Garvi
Of all the research interviews I have done, one particular conversation still stands out in my mind. A serial entrepreneur, founder of a VC company and keynote speaker at many a growth event described himself as an «enlightened despot» whose leadership style was based on a fondness for what he called «doers» - meaning people who would execute strategy. Needless to add that in his world there were clear boundaries between «thinkers» and «doers», between the elite who could read the strategic game and lay out the next move and those who were to implement decisions and report back on their effect.
In other words, any real thinking should only be done by those behind the scenes?
As I was tracing the origins of the venture capital phenomenon, I became aware of how easily something is labeled «the solution», endorsed by those institutions which will give it credibility, and of the strong impact that such labeling will have on business and policies (see chapter 7 in my dissertation).
It is interesting to note how little attention is given to understanding a problem and the real causes of observed symptoms in favour of cure-all remedies. The promotion of microcredits, laureated with a Nobel peace price, illustrates this trend in a different setting.
Are cure-alls becoming the new religion? As long as someone is conveniently labeling the solution no one is asking us to think for ourselves. We are urged to buy into «inconvenient truths» and endorse whatever is promoted as the next panacea for growth, world poverty or for saving the planet.
But if we choose to put our faith in ideas and technologies that are placed on a pedestal, we will inevitably be deceived. Because real solutions demand that we go beyond the symptoms and ask ourselves why a particular choice is important and what goals are fulfilled in the process.
There is no easy way out for true progress.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I agree! I did a 4 month study on microcredits. I found mixed results, not a panacea. My university, however, that the research must not have been very accurate because it went against a Nobel peace prize winner.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
@Sam: It is more than sad when academic institutions are more interested in following mainstream than in asking those questions which can serve to shed some real light on a phenomenon.
I would be interested in reading your report if you wish to share it!
January 24th, 2010 at 2:26 am
I first visited your blog soon after you had posted the above.
While I lack the background knowledge to wrap my brains around your chosen subject, I found it both intriguing and ironic that you had chosen the Chang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan to illustrate that precise post.
Chang had died in 1975 and the ground-breaking for that sore on Taipei cityscape started in October 1976, a month after the start of my two years stay in Taiwan. I walked often around the huge expanse of prime rate real estate the Chinese exiles (13% of the island population) who control Taiwan had chosen to enshrine their memory of the second bloodiest leader of the XXth century after his nemesis, Mao Ze-dong.
The long-suffering Taiwanese have at best uneasy feelings about that monument the Chinese on Taiwan gratified themselves with at tax-payer’s expense.
Dictatorships are investors’ magnets. It was the appeal of the exiled ROC on Taiwan then as it is that of China now. Taiwan was reaping the benefits of US and Japanese investments on the island. Those investments, coupled with the entrepreneurial acumen of small-scale Taiwanese family-owned businesses are the foundation of the Taiwanese electronics breakthrough.
US think-tanks are now selling the US public on China as they did Taiwan for the post-war period ending in 1979. That year president Carter established the diplomatic ties with China Nixon and his advisor Kissinger had worked out with Chou En-lai in 1971. American fascination with China goes back to the unraveling of the Qing Empire. Corporate America was rearing to go west, investing in the Middle Kingdom.
In the 1970s, the politically cowered Taiwanese were timidly reclaiming their islanders’ culture smothered for already 33 years by Chinese efforts to erase it.
Although they reaped the wealth and the laurels accrued from the Taiwanese miracle, militarily-educated Chang and his son Jing-guo’s ROC did not achieve it. The Japanese era-educated Taiwanese entrepreneurs did. The university exams were rigged to favor the offspring of that Chinese minority. Defense, education and government, all civil servants jobs went to the Chinese exiles. A law was passed in the 1980’s to automatically increase by 18% the officialdom retirement package. In those years, the commoner Taiwanese had no access to welfare or social security.
Retired Chinese military brass on Taiwan took advantage of the shift in the world perception of their motherland, China, to travel there and mend ties with the relatives they had been estranged from for most of their adulthood. In backward China, these old men were seen as cash-cows. In exchange for humiliating acknowledgment of guilt, China offered the old wayward ROC generals opportunities to grab young flesh. The same pattern applies to Taiwanese entrepreneurs with a yen to invest in China. China has them by their balls.
Our institutional investors and related China-kissers in academia are swooning over the Taiwan-China rapprochement ROC-on-Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou is unduly praised for. Meanwhile Taiwan bleeds its cash and jobs in China. But all is well on the western Pacific front. Soon the hot Taiwanese sweet potato will be on Zhongnanhai’s plate. Bleeding-hearts Sinologists will find it exhilarating to pore on reports of trampled human rights emanating from the Taiwan Special Administrative Region (SAR) of unified China.