Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
Since the last couple of decades, countries have been ranked on ‘ease of doing business’ as a good measure to know which country is easy and receptive with procedures to attract international enterprises, especially now when billion remote members of the highly talented gig economy seeking residency in highly efficient countries and regions. Sound economic thinking starts with a welcome invitation to enterprises and talents at the open gates of the country.
The Ranking List of 190 nations currently shows one nation at the top number one spot and another at the bottom at 190. What kind of leadership and planning does it take to achieve top positions or sink into oblivion? To explore further, fasten your seat belts.
In some countries, setting up a business is a happy experience; one essential visit to one government department, filling out a few forms, a few signatures, some registrations, some certifications, little fees, now bank accounts, and you are ready to trade. This is how you stay somewhere under the top 50 rankings.
There is another unique way to sink to the bottom. This is where registering a new business is like a constitutional crisis, demanding parliamentary hearings, some screaming and yelling, multiple photos identities from all angles, many dozens of forms, some demanding witnesses, oaths, lawyers, and notaries, each stage demanding a bigger rubber stamp, each step with bigger fees, each stage visiting different part of the city, so long, you survive the multiple visits over weeks and months, you will be ready to trade. No proof is required, like an open book; this is a daily reality for SMEs and entrepreneurs suffering in over 100 countries.
Firstly, it is time to thank the teams for organizing such an index and awaking the economic activity-starved countries with open proof as one of the critical reasons for failing on foreign investments and attracting highly qualified foreign talents.
Secondly, change is not easy; new thinking is always extremely offensive; nevertheless, when the nation’s productivity is the top issue while the economy is teetering on bankruptcy, the bureaucracy should notice and immediately bring some changes. Like, fire the first executive, claiming this needs new big funding, and fire the second executive, claiming too busy and has no time for such a big change.
These gaping holes in such administrative policies demand an authoritative understanding of entrepreneurialism to properly organize the open gate policies and procedures, which may be costing billions wasted in delays to advance economic structural delays and trillions lost in missed opportunities annually.
When was the last time there was a top leadership level discussion in your nation, despite a decade-old ranking list on the Internet? There is no need to get overly mesmerized in unproductive and indecisive meetings delivering photo-ops for social media and no advancements; it is time to fix the economy from all angles and in all directions as a prominent national makeover.
Lesson One: Inviting and encouraging a million plus SMEs and millions plus talented entrepreneurs to park under special visas has already made dozens of powerful and highly recognized nations. No, this is not a political or a new mega funding issue, but an entrepreneurial leadership and business management execution issue. When nations fail on open gate policies for business and commerce, they find no one chasing them for large-scale investments, major international conferences, or invited into major consortiums. Fix your house in order, open front gates to nicely invite, and redirect all your resources in this direction before doing exhaustive searches for foreign investments, resulting in disconnected attempts.
Lesson Two: No proof is required, big or small; business creation is not an economic development function; it is 100% entrepreneurial activity. By 2030, we will be in a Post-Platform-Economy + Merged Post-Gig-Economy + Post-Minus-Bureaucracy-Economy + Future Skill Mobilization = Nation Mobilization of Entrepreneurialism.
Where are your SME management policies, your skills in national mobilization of entrepreneurialism, and how ready are your teams for global invites to enlarge your entrepreneurial power bases standing under a bold, shiny spotlight or shy in some darkness?
Lesson Three: The Post-Platform-Economy is a highly integrated stage full of global rivers and oceans of digitization, Merged with Post-Gig-Economy where human talent liberated from century-old office thinking and irrelevant education will shine after responding to Post-Minus-Bureaucracy-Economy where paper-based bureaucracies and crawl-mentality will be wiped out due to new demands of hyper speed and precise accuracies as new Future of high-speed quality, on production, performance and profitability will expose, reject and immediately shut out incompetence.
Lesson Four: The new highlight on Women and Youth Power: The prolonged abandonment of women as the Second Wheel of the same economic cart and avoidance of youth as the driving force of new talents openly show insecure bureaucratic policies and open rejection of mighty hidden talents, failure to see SMEs oceans are fertilization points and citizenry as entrepreneurial force is where West failed and created a generational gap.
Lesson Five: Uplifting citizenry for higher productivity is where the biggest rewards and biggest challenges are hidden. Governments are now trying hard to transfer large chunks of ‘government staff’ out of bureaucracies and exited them towards self-employment and entrepreneurial activities. This trend will grow, and national mobilization of entrepreneurialism protocols provides many options.
How is the United Arab Emirates, a top shiny example of business setup, visa, and ultra-deluxe, ultra-efficient bureaucracies handling such challenges? On July 7, 2022, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, vice president and prime minister of the UAE, announced that Emiratis would be given paid leave from government jobs to start their own companies as part of the NAFIS initiative to get 75,000 nationals into the private sector.
There is no escape; today, digitization exposes all the good and bad, forcing major changes in bureaucracies. Bureaucracies kill innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, destroying the nation’s productivity, performance, and profitability. Highly digitized bureaucracies and open to change are pathways to meritocracy.
Almost half a century ago, one air-conditioned raised-floor single room with a dozen armoires with blinking lights replaced 100 floors and any skyscraper filled with clerical staff. All this slow-motion bureaucratic response and lack of efficiency behavior can be corrected, and the entire structural organization can be instantly parked in the cloud with instant national global access. This is how you manage a million queries, currently taking a million days, which would be processed in a million seconds as instant results.
Check the following against the master list and observe the performances of the top countries.
The reward is a change in new economic thinking: Economic development without entrepreneurialism is economic destruction. There is no political power without economic power. There is no economic power without entrepreneurial power. There is no entrepreneurial power unless the mindset hypothesis is balanced. The mindset hypothesis creates a balance between the job seeker’s and job creator’s mindsets.
No further proof is required: Increasing the debt ceiling is not economic success but a grand economic failure. 4B Factor: a billion displaced, a billion replaced, a billion misplaced, a billion on hunger watch. Abandoning a citizenry that cannot stand up to global age competitiveness is a political failure. Inabilities to identify, categorize, and digitize high-potential SMEs is an economic development failure.
Nevertheless, failing to understand the ‘mindset hypothesis,’ the difference between the job seeker and job creator mindsets is the first skill required for any serious dialogue on SME economic recovery. The second skill needed for any economic development activity is to articulate in some depth the ‘national mobilization of entrepreneurialism.’ More on Google
Why Expothon has been sharing information weekly with some 2,000 senior officials at the Cabinet level in around 100 countries for the last 50 to 100 weeks? These narratives are an open challenge to current economic development and offer immediately applicable pragmatic solutions and new thinking on mobilizing the untapped talents of the national citizenry and the revival of entrepreneurialism-based economies.
The First 100-day challenge: Nation-by-nation, start by orienting 100 to 1000 senior and junior government officials across the country or regions already mandated to foster economic development and uplift SME sectors. Delivered via a dedicated team in live engagements via bursts of customized intense training over 100 days: The prime objective is to orient them on how to manage the operation side of the national mobilization of SME entrepreneurialism, which will work as a customized national agenda to identify 10% to 50% of their high-potential SMEs and place them on digital platforms for up-skilling exporters and re-skilling manufacturers to quadruple their production, performance, and profitability, resulting in better quality and global exportability.
Check your national standing on the global list, year-by-year, and no matter what; discover your meritocracy and keep learning it endlessly. This is how nations survive economically and become streamlined. See how nations have surprisingly jumped so high and why so many are shockingly drowning, but why? What is the secret? Where is the mystery, where is the incompetency, and who controls all this sluggishness? Discover your mindset and acquire your mastery; it is an incredible journey.
The rest is easy.
