Manufacturing dead in the U.S.A.?
Read yesterday’s interview with Cisco CEO John Chambers on page ONE of Investor’s Business Daily.
Chambers took over this MANUFACTURING company in 1994.
Revenues 1994: $1 Billion.
Revenues 2009: $40 Billion.
Prospects for technology companies and technology manufacturers in the U.S.A.? Nothing short of staggering in their potential, Chambers asserts. In infotech, let alone biological-based sciences, Chambers declares that we have many, many, and many more LARGE-SCALE REVOLUTIONS to come.
One suggestion of his, which I love, and which Chambers attributes to VC superstar John Doerr: “We should staple a Green Card to every science, technology, engineering, and math advanced degree [awarded by a U.S. university to a non-U.S. national]. The economy is struggling now, but it won’t be forever, and we need to attract and keep the best and brightest in our country to maintain our competitiveness as a nation.” (TP: Alas, fat chance.) (TP: Chambers is one of the many, me among them, who points out that our top research universities, best in the world by a long shot in terms of quality and quantity, are perhaps the #1 U.S. competitive advantage; we may lament the passing of “old manufacturing,” but we damn well better remember that we must pull out all the stops, private and public, to support to the hilt our top research universities.)
(NB: Chambers, arguably the most Republican of Silicon Valley superstars, perhaps surprises with this: “I think the U.S. government is doing the right thing with the stimulus package, and I hope other governments follow suit.”)