States. The subprime mortgage crisis born in the U.S.
rattles economies around the world. Economic rewards
are also more broadly shared. Silicon Valley has clones
throughout the United States, in Austin, Texas, for exam-
ple, and there are thriving high-tech centers in Ireland,
India, China, and many other countries as well. When
the Irish economy began to slump recently, once-strife-
ridden Northern Ireland began attracting high-tech jobs.
Who could have imagined twenty years ago that many of
the former Soviet socialist republics would be absorbed
into a single Europe, with a common currency and pass-
port? Today the twenty-seven nations that make up the
EU (Croatia, Macedonia, and Turkey remain candidates
for inclusion) have a population of almost 500 million and
generate some 30 percent of the world’s Gross National
Product—$16.8 trillion in 2007. China’s economic clout is
enormous and continues to grow as that nation unleashes
the frustrated entrepreneurial energy of 1.3 billion people.
McKinsey researchers predict that, over the next decade,
the global marketplace will swell by almost a billion new
consumers as people in emerging nations begin to earn
annual salaries of $5,000 or more, the minimum required
for discretionary spending.
- Demographics and values
The American population is aging. Is it ever. According
to the 2000 census, 77 million Americans are 50 or older.
That’s an increase of 21 percent in a decade. Those over 50
are the nation’s fastest growing age group, and they require a
whole constellation of new goods and services. In 2008
38.7 million Americans were 65 or older—12.7 percent of
Organizations Can Help—or Hinder
