Excellence and Competitiveness

There are many wise words being said here, but today's most impressive presentation was the one of Luc Soete on Activating knowledge. He also took part in the lunch discussion we just finished, together with Jeremy Rifkin and Lester Thurow. Taking off fram the competitiveness of Europe, we came to talk a lot about China. Lester argued that the chinese discrimination of rural people needs to come to an end. For my part, I see the discrimination of rurals, or rater uneducated, increasing as a result of globalisation. He agreed on that, but still meant that we should think it over, be careful about it. Mr Soete mentioned that we in Europe need to change our models of social welfare, which are to a high degree founded on a base of labour rather than knowledge work - being a knowledge worker you have not the same reasons to retire at 58 as has a physical worker. Still, a high number of European knowledge workers enjoy this welfare system.