Elias Carayannis, GWU School of Business.
Finally there is a new government in Greece in the midst of the Euro-crisis. One should wonder however whether Greece’s leaders and their European paymasters will choose to seriously plan and act to drive growth that is really and seriously intelligent, inclusive and sustainable as there have been too many wishes, pronouncements and presumptuous theories about “crisis-killing” recipes. The emerging patterns seem to indicate that there will be short-term patches in reaction to unrealistic and ill-advised goals and policies that reveal a singular lack of of vision and leadership for the European Project.
We still hope that innovation and entrepreneurship will be fully leveraged at the micro level along with more resource-rich strategies at the macro level (a recent article in the Fnancial Times showed how in the US the funds allocated to mitigate the crisis (TARP and Fed funds) were more than double on a per capita basis than the EU funds allocated for the Euro-crisis.
In connection to that, a recent article in the International Herald Tribune discussed how Greece’s recovery might well be built around its traditional comparative strengths (for instance, Greece has only 4 per cent in e global olive oil market and 28 per cent in the feta cheese market albeit this has been legally registered as having Greece as its place of origin, not to discuss the Greek yogurt products promulgated in the US by anything but Greek interests).
It thus seems that people in the government of Greece as well as its Embassies in the main target markets for Greek products need to do a better job to help build key product and service niches for Greek exports.
On a more positive note, the Innovation Odysseys initiative (see the first completed pilot at <http://ok2012.uoi.gr/> <http://ok2012.uoi.gr/> ok2012.uoi.gr <http://ok2012.uoi.gr> <http://ok2012.uoi.gr> ) has been spreading virally across several Greek universities and we are currently working to prepare the visits in the US for the first spin-offs emerging from this initiative highhlighting and promoting the high tech competences that Greece posseses along with its naturally advantaged food products and tourism services.
We hope that there will be a strategic alignment and a build-up of critical mass of these two development pillars along with initiatives such as the Greece Debt Free one that Peter Nomikos and others are leading to ensure we do not end up simply auctioning off the country on the cheap just to service its debt but not necessarily actually reducing or wiping out the debt it has had to cope with.
