“Today’s rapid pace of change makes it crucial that we, as individual citizens, have a clear idea as to where we want our world to go. If we hope to find and stay on the right course, we must agree to the basic features of the world we want to create. And we must think big, as big as we dare to imagine – lest we waste the unprecedented opportunity that the world is offering us. Let us dream the wildest possible dreams and then pursue them.”

How to restore National Prosperity?

One answer came from Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School. He argued that the prosperity of a nation is the result of the competitive advantages of its regions and states. We should therefore nurture “clusters” of vigorous competitors, sophisticated customers, high-quality business inputs and supportive suppliers.

Many grand schemes followed: techno- parks, cities of knowledge, special economic zones and so forth. Most came with tax breaks and investment incentives to attract a critical mass of entrepreneurs to create the wealth.

Porter no longer believes that government alone can drive economic development. National prosperity - he says - has to be the outcome of a collaborative bottom-up process in which many individuals, companies and institutions take responsibility.

How can we foster such collaboration? Fortunately, the internet is proving to be a powerful medium for coordinating diverse teams and cultivating group efforts. The Yala does just this.

We need imagination because we can’t solve our problems at the level at which we created them. We can’t understand the complex relationships in our businesses and communities by simply looking at their individual parts. Instead, we must seek ways to improve the quality of the discourse across the whole system:

Engage  Connect people in neighboring organizations.
Listen  Invite feedback and aid pattern recognition.
Cultivate  Help people develop their own solutions.

Better relationships will give rise to better performance, make us smarter, and reduce the cost of conflict for individuals, groups and organizations.