Talent Management - July 2008 - (Page 4)

[from the editor] by Mike Prokopeak I I A Question That Needs an Answer f you’ve ever wondered why one company excels, while another with the same apparent resources and talent stalls, you’ll ﬁnd a kindred spirit in esteemed British scientist and noted China scholar Joseph Needham. A Cambridge-educated biochemist, Needham became enthralled with Chinese culture after meeting a group of Chinese scientists in England in 1937. After nearly 20 years as a researcher in embryology and morphogenesis, Needham’s life took a sharp turn, and he became obsessed with a single perplexing question. This single question became the focus of Needham’s life work, spurring him to move to China and begin work on his magnum opus, Science & Civilisation in China, a giant multivolume work dedicated to ﬁnding an answer. As with so many important questions, the answer was elusive and complicated. Needham pointed to a combination of factors that allowed Europe to leapfrog China. He cites an unwieldy bureaucracy that stiﬂed innovation amongst the country’s entrepreneurial class, a lack of competition and conﬂict a long time, the rest of the world saw the country as a technological backwater. Is China again a hotbed of innovation, ready to reclaim its place at the forefront? The country’s leaders seem hell-bent on making Needham’s grand question historically irrelevant. While his question ultimately may be moot, the question about why one business fails while another succeeds remains signiﬁcant, and the answer is just as elusive. Take the examples of social networks and Web search. Why did Friendster falter while Facebook ﬂourished? Why did Google dominate Web search while early search king AOL ﬂatlined? There are libraries full of books with potential answers and business schools stocked with MBA students exploring the latest theories. In reality, there is no single answer. As talent managers, it’s our job to ponder those big questions and think strategically about how to leverage talent to keep the organization’s innovation engine primed and running for the long haul. Needham and his collaborators eventually wrote 24 volumes and 15,000 pages exploring his grand question. While talent managers more than likely don’t have the time or energy that Needham brought to bear on his question, they nonetheless have important insight to offer. What’s the grand question for your organization? Drop me a line at mikep@talentmgt.com. It’s the talent manager’s job to ponder the big questions and think about how to leverage talent to keep the innovation engine primed and running for the long haul. Thanks in part to Needham’s research, it’s now widely known that the Chinese are responsible for many important technological breakthroughs. While their Western contemporaries languished through the Dark Ages, the Chinese were busy inventing new technologies, including the magnetic compass, ﬁreworks, wood-block printing, suspension bridges and gunpowder. Yet, sometime around 1700, China’s innovation engine stalled. Meanwhile, in Europe, a continent that had been puttering along for nearly a thousand years, the Industrial Revolution took off, reaching new heights for innovation that set the stage for the modern era. In talking to his Chinese colleagues, Needham turned his inquisitive scientist’s eye to what later became known as Needham’s Grand Question: Why did Western Europe become the cradle of modern science while China, an early technology leader, failed to keep pace? with neighboring nations to spur innovation and a totalitarian government that mufﬂed the country’s inventive engine. And Needham’s question may be ﬂawed. After all, it’s taking Chinese development out of its cultural context and setting it against a European frame. Regardless of the potential answers, Needham’s question is receiving renewed attention this year. With the eyes of the world set to turn to Beijing next month for the Summer Olympics, China is readying itself to retake the spotlight. Spurred by its turbocharged economic engine, China’s government has been busily modernizing the capital city, unveiling glimmering new buildings and daring architectural structures to showcase the country’s newfound political, military and economic power. With China set to reintroduce itself, it’s difﬁcult to remember that for Mike Prokopeak Editorial Director mikep@talentmgt.com July 2008 4 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com http://www.talentmgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Talent Management - July 2008

Talent Management - July 2008 Editor’s Letter Human Performance Leading Edge Learning Connections Guest Editorial Passive Candidate Recruiting: Evolving with a Changing Workforce How Do They Feel? Sec Regulations and Executive Compensation Performance Management: A Retail Perspective Train the Non-Trainer Management-Go-Round: Developing Future Leaders Netflix Creates Its Own Script for Talent Management Intuit Spotlights Strategic Importance of Global Employee Recognition Make HR a Profit Center: Automate Technology to Gather Tax Credit Data Offshoring and the Impact on Talent Management Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources Full Potential

Talent Management - July 2008

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