Yesterday, a colleague sent me the text of Anne Mulcahy's speech from the AeA High Tech Government Dinner on June 8, 2005. Mulchay is chairman and CEO of Xerox, and she used the problem and turnaround at Xerox as an example of the crisis the US faces if it doesn’t invest in its future. Mulchay says:
During our crisis, we didn't take one dollar out of research and development in our core businesses -- not one. Together with our partner Fuji Xerox, we’ve continued to invest about $1.5 billion in R&D every year with a similar amount planned for this year.
Some people have asked me how we managed to do that -- to dramatically reduce costs in order to survive, yet protect the research and development community to insure a steady stream of new products and technology today and tomorrow.
To me, it's a curious question. To me, there is no real choice. What kind of a victory would it have been to save the company, but trade-off our future? What kind of a victory would it be to avoid financial bankruptcy today only to face a technological drought tomorrow?
Mulcahy then cites the dismal and familiar statistics -- about DARPA funding, the dwindling number of computer science majors, the growing numbers of science degrees awarded to students in Chinese universities -- as evidence that the US is not investing in its future. Mulcahy calls herself an optimist, convinced we can rise to this challenge, and she calls on all of us to get to work before it is truly too late.
I’m an optimist too, but this general issue of not investing in the future (not saving for retirement, not fixing Social Security or Medicare, not being energy smart and even not eating healthy food) really has me worried. What’s wrong with us that we won’t invest in the future? How have we become so shortsighted?
Maybe it’s because we elect the “get things done� leaders instead of the “visionary thinker� leaders. Maybe it’s because our lives are so packed with today’s issues that we can’t see into the future. Or maybe the road to the future looks so rocky and steep that we turn away. Let us know what you think. Send a letter to FCW or use the comment feature below.
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