Fast Talk: What’s the Biggest Change Facing Business In the Next 10 Years?

Malcolm Gladwell

Writer, The New Yorker magazine
New York, New York

Gladwell, 42, is author of the best-sellers The Tipping Point and Blink. His books and his articles in The New Yorker consistently offer fresh perspectives on issues businesspeople care about.
First appeared in Fast Company: January 2005

“Business has to find its national voice. It has to be engaged in the politics of this country in a way it’s not accustomed to. Right now, executives are very good at saying, ‘Cut our taxes, cut our regulations.’ And they’re really terrible at making far more important and substantive arguments about social policy. It’s time they stopped banging this one-note drum and started saying that a lot of the things that have been relegated to ideology are, in fact, matters of fundamental international competitiveness for this country.

Take, for example, health care. We are ceding manufacturing jobs to the rest of the world because we can’t get around to providing some kind of basic, uniform health insurance. Because of our strange ideological problem with nationalized health insurance, we’re basically driving Detroit out of business–which strikes me as a very counterintuitive, nonsensical policy. The simple fact is that GM and Ford and Chrysler cannot compete in the world market if they’re asked to bear the pension and health-care costs of their retirees. Can’t be done. It’s that simple.

I also think it’s time that business stood up and joined the immigration debate. I think it has been–with the exception of some high-tech firms–shamefully silent on this, which should be one of its top competitiveness issues. Congress should not be shutting down the borders at a time when we’re 10 or 15 years away from some very serious workplace shortages, skilled-labor shortages. We’ve shut the spigot off, and we’re keeping out the very people who would drive our economy 10 years out when our workforce retires en masse.