As U.S. factory jobs and back-office jobs continue to move to China and India, Americans need to focus on developing the primary skills they have left to offer the global marketplace: creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
For centuries, the U.S. has been the world’s leader in these skills, which are more important now than ever before. China and India now know how to make products and provide services on their own; however, they are still relying on the U.S. to decide what those products and services should be. These decisions require creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
To ensure that future American workers will be able to compete globally, educational efforts in the U.S. should focus on developing these skills in children and adolescents.