Commercial success depends largely on attracting, motivating and retaining high performers who can drive the business forward. The top companies and nations have already put out their feelers and are recruiting their high potentials worldwide. Not only in the Western world but also in China and India, where economic growth increases rapidly, the demand for highly qualified managers is constantly on the increase. This new global competition will change the world radically in the next few decades, because for the first time it will not only be fought over goods or services but also over people, smart people, the so-called `creative class'. Fact is that the fusing of the world markets has picked up speed incredibly in the last few years and will continue to do so in the future. Countries, which have been dependent on the support of rich nations not so long ago, can today present stable economic growth due to smart reforms and attract investors from abroad. Nearas well as offshoring markets are shifting constantly. But students worldwide are hardly aware of the swift developments of global proportions. Often they are subjects of education systems that don't prepare them sufficiently for the requirements of the business world today, since they are outdated, or have been derived from regimes that had a rigidly structured system and left little scope for creative freedom. Their perspective is national and rarely international.
Listen! Hear that great big sucking sound? That's the vacuum forming as baby boomer retirees get ready to flee the workforce. The generation born between 1946 and 1964 currently makes up more than a third of the working population. Should they retire en masse, the sudden depletion of leadership, knowledge, and experience across organizations and industries would be devastating.
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