“The Beatrix Potter Guide to Business”

Schumpeter

The tale of Mr Jackson

The public sector has had its fill of management consultants

Jan 21st 2010
From The Economist print edition

Illustration by Brett Ryder

MARGARET THATCHER regarded Beatrix Potter’s “Ginger and Pickles” as the only business book worth reading. The BBC recently elaborated on this insight in a series on “The Beatrix Potter Guide to Business”. “Jemima Puddleduck” is a treatise on enterprise. “Samuel Whiskers” is a parable about the importance of rolling audits. And “Mrs Tittlemouse”? It is a warning about the dangers of employing management consultants.

Mrs Tittlemouse is “a most terribly tidy particular little mouse”, forever cleaning her house and shooing away intruders. But one day Mr Jackson, a “fat-voiced” toad, arrives and makes himself at home, lounging in the rocking chair and putting his feet on the fender. He not only refuses to leave, he scours the house for tasty morsels, spreading chaos as he goes. It takes Mrs Tittlemouse a day to clear up after him when he finally leaves.

Management consultants have been hopping all over the public sector for years. The growing pressure to get “more for less” persuaded governments to turn to the private sector for inspiration. And the challenges of adopting information technology prompted them to turn to IT consulting giants such as IBM and Accenture. Britain’s New Labour government led the world in its infatuation with consultants. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown talked excitedly about “transforming” Whitehall and its fuddy-duddy ways. Consultants crawled over everything from the Cabinet Office to the health service. New Labour apparatchiks were much more likely to wax lyrical about Tom Peters and Michael Porter than Keir Hardie and Nye Bevan.

The result was a bonanza for the management-consulting industry. Money poured into the consultants’ pockets, especially during 2004-06. Over that period, spending on consultancy increased by a third. And a New Labour-consultancy complex formed at the heart of government. The Downing Street Policy Unit was full of former McKinsey consultants. Lord Birt, a former BBC boss, was much criticised for working simultaneously for Downing Street and McKinsey. Patricia Hewitt, a former head of research at Accenture (then called Andersen Consulting) was health secretary in 2005-07; David Blunkett got a consultancy job when he resigned as work and pensions secretary in disgrace.

Consultants are nothing if not ingenious in getting their feet on the fender. The Obama administration looked like a perfect mark when it came to Washington, DC, on a wave of hope and hype (Mr Obama even created the new job of “chief performance officer”). Monitor Group, based in Boston, has signed up Libya’s Colonel Qaddafi as a client. McKinsey actually scented an opportunity in the credit crunch: an article in the consultancy’s house magazine urged that governments needed to go in for “whole-government transformation” if they were to cope with the mess. But even the most ingenious consultants will be challenged in the coming years.

Yawning deficits will force governments worldwide to cut back on necessary expenditure, let alone unnecessary splurging. And there are many who argue that consultants represent unnecessary splurging. In Britain, consultancy fatigue is even more pronounced than New Labour fatigue. Successive parliamentary inquiries have revealed appalling examples of waste. From the NHS to the BBC, consultants are regarded as fork-tailed devils.

This counterblast against consultants is largely to the good. They have frequently left devastation in their wake and have treated the public sector as dumping grounds for airy-fairy ideas such as “transformation” that have been rejected by the private sector. They have built overly elaborate management structures that make it harder for people to do their jobs. And they have demotivated people who like to feel that they are working for the public good. The government has wasted huge amounts of money on botched IT projects designed by consultants. The worst example, a £12.7 billion project to improve the health service’s systems, has now been partially abandoned; but the Ministry of Defence is still struggling with a project that is currently £180m over budget.

Blame the paymaster, mostly

That said, it is worth adding two qualifications to the general chorus of condemnation. The first is that just because some consultants have given bad advice does not prove that they are incapable of giving good advice. Civil services are congenitally inward-looking organisations, led by people who are plucked from elite universities and shielded from the rest of the world in government palaces; it helps to expose them to innovations from the private sector. The private sector routinely introduces reductions in costs and improvements in performance that are almost unknown in the public sector. The IT debacles may be dispiriting. But few government departments possess the internal expertise to master new technology on their own.

The second is that the people who are ultimately responsible for the debacles are not the hired hands but their political masters. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were suckers for flashy but insubstantial ideas about transformation. Lower-level politicians were lazy managers. In 2006 the National Audit Office provided a devastating list of ways in which the government had failed to make the best use of consultants—ranging from failing to appreciate what could be achieved with their own staff to refusing to learn from what the consultants were telling them.

But the biggest reason for the failure is that politicians have repeatedly used consultants to avoid dealing with the difficult questions by dressing up antiquated institutions in fashionable business garb. Back in 1995 Peter Drucker argued that if politicians were serious about “really reinventing government” they would go back to first principles and ask if large parts of government needed to be there in the first place. Tell Mr Jackson to follow Drucker’s advice and he might yet produce value for money.

*****

(click to enlarge)
Beatrix Potter, 1913 (credit: Pictorial Parade/London Daily Express, reproduced by permission of Frederick Warne & Co.)

(born July 28, 1866, South Kensington, Middlesex, Eng. — died Dec. 22, 1943, Sawrey, Lancashire) English author and illustrator of children's books. In her childhood Potter spent holidays in Scotland and the English Lake District, which inspired her love of animals and stimulated her imaginative and technically superb watercolour drawings. The illustrated animal stories she sent to a sick child when she was 27 were published as The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), which became one of the best-selling children's books of all time. More than 20 sequels followed, featuring such original characters as Jeremy Fisher, Squirrel Nutkin, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.

Bibliography

• The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)
• The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903)
• The Tailor of Gloucester (1903)
• The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904)
• The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904)
• The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (1905)
• The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan (1905)
• The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (1906)
• The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit (1906)
• The Story of Miss Moppet (1906)
• The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907)
• The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908)
• The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or, The Roly-Poly Pudding (1908)
• The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909)
• The Tale of Ginger and Pickles (1909)
• The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910)
• Peter Rabbit's Painting Book (1911)
• The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes (1911)
• The Tale of Mr. Tod (1912)
• The Tale of Pigling Bland (1913)
• Tom Kitten's Painting Book (1917)
• Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes (1917)
• The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse (1918)
• Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes (1922)
• Jemima Puddle-Duck's Painting Book (1925)
• Peter Rabbit's Almanac for 1929 (1928)
• The Fairy Caravan (1929)
• The Tale of Little Pig Robinson (1930)
• Sister Anne (1932)
• Wag-by-Wall (decorations by J. J. Lankes) (1944)
• The Tale of the Faithful Dove (illustrated by Marie Angel) (1955, 1970)

A Big-Picture Look at Google, Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo

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January 22, 2010, 6:31 pm

A Big-Picture Look at Google, Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo

By NICK BILTON

Nick Bilton/The New York Times

On Wednesday, I wrote about a battle looming between Apple and Google as discussions take place over the possibility of Apple making Microsoft’s Bing the default search engine on the iPhone.

Stepping back further than a single search engine fight, it’s evident that Google, Microsoft, Apple, and even Yahoo are now competing in numerous different business arenas.

The chart above illustrates many of the services these companies provide. Some of their products have been cornerstone revenue streams, and others are just at the beginning of development. But putting them up against each other really helps illustrate each company’s focus and their possible future directions of exploration.

Google
Although the company started in search and made billions of dollars in search-related advertising, it recently made the move into mobile software and hardware. Google is also moving to the desktop as hardware companies consider using Google’s Android operating system for tablet PCs and netbooks and Google continues developing its own Chrome OS. Google’s recent foray into mobile phones, with the Nexus One, signals a big shift for the company, but the lack of customer service might hinder customer adoption of its mobile products.

Microsoft
Microsoft really competes with everyone. It is on the desktop, in the cloud, on mobile devices, in your living room, answering search queries and navigating you to your favorite restaurant. So what’s next? Although the company invested in Facebook, and it offers some social features on its Xbox platform, it still needs to make a major leap into social networking. Another major gap is mobile phone hardware.

Apple
Apple’s success with Mac personal computers, the iPod, the iPhone and iTunes has allowed it to step back from the fray and avoid competing in search, news, maps and social networks. But the recent competition with Google over mobile phone software might change its attitude. Apple has close to $34 billion in cash and securities, which means that it can afford to make some big purchases in the search market — or any other market for that matter.

A side note: While looking at the comparisons of these four companies, it’s especially interesting to see that Apple is the only one of the four that charges for its online services, including calendar, contact sync and Web mail. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all provide these cloud-based products free of charge.

Yahoo
Yahoo has not really added any new products or services over the past year, but it seems to do best with content-related products. Yahoo News is still the number-one news site, and Flickr continues to grow and remain a highly successful photo Web site. As the race really pushes towards mobile over the next few years, it’s going to be interesting to see how Yahoo decides to play in that space.

海地重建工作推出“工作换酬劳”项目

时事风云 | 2010.01.22

海地重建工作推出“工作换酬劳”项目

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 地震后潘基文探访海地

在海地发生震灾之后，联合国希望能促使该国灾民更多参与本国的灾后重建进程，联合国开发计划署和西班牙政府为此推出了所谓的 "工作换酬劳"项目，旨在帮助22万海地居民参与清除地震废墟的工作，为他们每日提供5美元的酬劳，此举也旨在促进海地的经济发展。联合国海地问题特使， 美国前总统比尔·克林顿对上述计划表示支持。

据媒体报道，国际救援海地灾民的努力取得了进展，越来越多的灾民获得了国际救援物资。但首都太子港的现状却并不令人感到乐观。

在太子港港口，许多人都想方设法在渡船上找到一个的位置。许许多多的小木船满载乘客和行李离开港口驶向伊斯帕尼奥拉岛西部的热雷米。难民们盼望着尽 快离开被强震摧毁的太子港。现在港口终于恢复运作。最大的破坏已被修复。海地政府为船主提供燃料，以便他们运送蜂拥而至的大批难民。 Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 海地重建家园的工作还要依靠当地民众

绝望中的首都灾民想方设法逃离太子港。苦等救援物资，余震的不断发生以及尸体腐烂的臭味儿令他们忍无可忍。尽管在强震发生一周多以后，大街上的尸体 已被清除，但空气中依旧弥漫着废墟中尸体的腐烂气味。在乡下有亲戚的首都居民纷纷乘坐大巴逃离首都。少数富有者或是在美国，加拿大有亲属的灾民或许会得到 签证，登上运输机离开受强震袭击的灾区。

但绝大多数灾民只能在当地坚守。有些人甚至重新投入到工作之中。海地最重要的信息台大都会电台已重新开播。因担心再度发生余震，大都会电台的工作人 员在院子里工作。电台负责人理查德·魏德迈尔说："我不知道今后该怎么办。现在我根本无法安排本月内的工作。我们依赖广告收入。然而，现在所有在我们这儿 作广告的企业都被地震摧毁。我不知道，如何为我的手下工作人员和自己发工资。我们唯一能够考虑的是如何搞到明天的面包和咖啡，我们应该怎样保护我们的后代 和自己，免受各种有可能出现的疾病侵扰。"

几乎所有大都会电台的工作人员都睡在公园里，或是大街上。到目前为止，他们看不到更好的前景。联合国愿为海地灾民提供帮助，为他们展示更加美好的未 来，于是启动了一项所谓的"工作换酬劳"计划。具体内容是凡是参加清理废墟，打扫街道的海地灾民每天可获得5美元报酬。按计划应该有22万海地灾民参加这 项工作，但到目前为止只有两三百人参加。目前，海地的灾后重建进程由外国策划。如何生存是则海地居民的首要难题。

作者：Anne-Katrin Mellmann/祝红

责编：叶宣

回顾德国绿党三十年变迁

德国 | 2010.01.13

回顾德国绿党三十年变迁

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 德国绿党标志

"不要迷信30岁以上的人",这是上个世纪60年代, 70年代在德国无人不知，无人不晓的一句口号。当年大学生和青年人举行了各种面貌一新的抗议活动，以表达他们对联邦德国社会和政治体制的不满情绪。他们要 求政府推行和平政策， 要求抵制核能， 主张环境保护和维护妇女的权益。最终绿党在全联邦德国诞生。 在绿党成立30周年之际，本台记者回顾了绿党走过的这段历史。

外面走廊里还摆放着一些箱子。施托伯勒刚刚搬进联邦议院为议员们安排的新办公室。这已经是他担任议员以来第三次搬家了。 这位高个子， 一头白发的政治家，自1985年以来首次代表绿党进入议会。施托伯勒今年已经70岁，伴随着绿党走过了30年的风风雨雨 。 他回忆说：“绿党是在对现有政党体系提出批评的过程中产生的。 我们不希望象其他政党一样，因此我们做出了一些正式规定。我们要建立的是一个非传统形式的政党。”

施托伯勒介绍说，绿党要求由一定比例的妇女担任党内职务，不允许议员同时担任党内的领导工作，党内实行双层领导责任制。 1980年年初，绿党正式成为全国性政党。 施托伯勒说，绿党成立当时可以说是应运而生，“当时的社会出现了严重问题。 导弹竞赛正在威胁着世界的生存。”

而那时现有的政党对裁军， 妇女权益以及环保这些德国社会以及全球遇到的新问题并不感兴趣。1980年绿党推出的一个竞选广告短片。 短片中一个孩子和一个老年男人站在河边谈话：

“爷爷，河里的鱼怎么都死了?”

“这是因为工业废水将莱茵河河水污染了。”

“谁告诉你的?”

“绿党。”

1980年绿党获得了联邦议院大选中1。5%的选票。3年后绿党以5.6%的选票顺利进入联邦议院。 当年刚刚当选为议会议员的凯丽表示，将在议会中继续坚持抗议运动的目标。凯丽说：“我们将履行抗议运动的义务，并带着这个目标进入联邦议院。 我们永远不会背叛这个目标。这就是我要在这里要做出的承诺。”

Bildunterschrift: 伴随绿党走过30年的政治家施托伯勒(Christian Ströbele)

当年绿党党员们对现有的国家体制充满了不信任感。 可能也是因为这一点，绿党的议员往往愿意表现得与众不同 。 施托伯勒回忆说：“带着绿色的树枝， 穿着完全不同于其他议员的服装。更为重要的是，他们在讲台上的发言内容完全不同于其他人。”

虽然进入了议会，但是绿党很长时间仍然不是执政党。 通过积极从事反对党的工作，绿党迫使自民党，基民盟和社民党改变他们的思维方式， 迫使他们接受绿党提出的一些议题。 1985年绿党终于获得了在黑森州州政府中的执政地位。 约什卡·菲舍尔正式宣誓成为黑森州环境部长。

菲舍尔是穿着运动鞋和休闲装参加就职仪式的。因此他被人们戏称为运动鞋部长。但正是在他以及其他一些绿党政治家的多年带领下， 绿党逐渐成为了一个适应执政要求的政党。而绿党的传统派一被边缘化。 1998年绿党终于成功地同社民党组建了德国联邦政府。菲舍尔成为德国的外交部长并参与做出了德国加入科索沃战争的决定。1999年绿党在比勒费尔德举行 党代会。会上就要和平还是要战争这个话题发生了激烈的争论。菲舍尔说： “好啊，现在终于来了。 我早就等着你们的攻击了。是的， 我是一个战争主战派。你们就等着米洛舍维奇会给你们颁发诺贝尔和平奖吧。”

在绿党担任执政党，主持联邦政府工作期间还决定派兵前往阿富汗。因此党内不少党员都对绿党的信条， 对绿党所追求的目标产生了怀疑。值得一提的是，当时绿党政治家特里廷出任联邦环境部长。在他的领导下， 德国虽然决定继续维持核能发电站， 但是红绿联合政府也作出了逐步退出核能，并积极发展替代能源的决定。 特里廷表示：“我们认为，我们必须和工业界就退出核能的期限达成协议，共同合作减少核能带来风险。”

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 1985年，被戏称为运动鞋部长的菲舍尔(Joschka Fischer)

施托伯勒对于绿党如今放弃许多激进的立场感到难过。他认为，绿党变得更加四平八稳，绿党的政治家们也按照选民的喜好，纷纷穿上了西装。 然而在2009年联邦议院大选中，绿党赢得了超过10%的选票。这一点让施托伯勒感到十分欣慰。

施托伯勒表示：“特别是在柏林等大城市中， 绿党是一个民众政党已经不容置疑。而且绿党在柏林中心地区不但是一个民众政党， 还是一个受到民众拥护的最为强大的政党。 ”

作者：Heiner Kiesel/韩明芳

责编：乐然

Hospitals Could Stop Infections by Tackling Bacteria Patients Bring In, Studies Find

By PAM BELLUCK

Published: January 6, 2010

Hundreds of thousands of patients each year suffer from infections after surgery, and experts say more than half of those infections stem from bacteria the patients themselves are carrying in their nose or on their skin. Otherwise harmless bacteria can enter the body through surgical incisions and cause infections that can require expensive treatment, slow recovery or even cause death.

But two new studies suggest relatively simple ways hospitals can prevent many infections by killing the bacteria on the patient before surgery, with methods of screening, scrubbing or pretreating the patient that many hospitals do not typically use.

“This is going to be a huge help to the infection-control crowd,” said Marcia Patrick, a nurse and board member of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, who was not involved with either study. “How can we not do this? It would truly be penny-wise and pound-foolish. And it’s the right thing to do for patients.”

The studies, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, examined infections that develop at the site of surgery, often around the incision, and afflict more than 300,000 patients a year in the United States.

While experts are increasingly trying to stop hospital-acquired infections by approaches including stepped-up hand-washing by doctors and nurses, the new studies looked at the bacteria patients may be carrying before entering the hospital, especially a common bacteria, staphylococcus aureus.

“About one-third of people at any one time carry this bacterium in their nose or on their skin,” said a co-author of one study, Dr. Henri Verbrugh, a professor of medical microbiology at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “It does not give them any problem, but if they go to a hospital and the skin is somehow breached, they are really prone to invasion or infection by their own bacteria.”

Dr. Verbrugh and colleagues tested patients for the bacteria using nasal swabs. They treated about 500 who carried the bacteria for five days with an antibiotic ointment on their noses and showers with soap treated with chlorhexidine, an antiseptic. After surgery, which sometimes occurred during the five-day treatment, those patients were 60 percent less likely to develop infections than patients receiving a placebo of ointment and soap.

The study included only patients whose operations were extensive enough to require at least five days of hospitalization. Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, an infectious disease specialist at Virginia Commonwealth University, who wrote an editorial about the studies, said he would recommend the approach primarily for serious operations like heart surgery or joint replacements, or patients with immune system problems.

But Dr. Wenzel said the method used in the second study should be adopted across the board. That study, conducted at six United States hospitals, compared the skin disinfectant hospitals use 75 percent of the time before surgery with another one. The researchers found that patients receiving the standard disinfectant, povidone-iodine, were significantly more likely to develop infections. Those cleaned with the alternative, chlorhexidine-alcohol, got 40 percent fewer total infections, and half as many staphylococcus aureus infections.

A study author, Dr. Rabih O. Darouiche, a professor of medicine at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston, said chlorhexidine-alcohol was recommended a decade ago by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for cleaning when catheters were inserted, but had not been extensively studied for surgical preparation.

Ms. Patrick said most hospitals still used the iodine solution largely because “we’ve always done it this way.”

Cost is a factor with both studies’ methods. Dr. Darouiche said chlorhexidine-alcohol costs about $12 per patient compared with $3.50 for povidone-iodine. His study was financed by CareFusion, which makes both products. It had no access to the data.

Dr. Verbrugh, whose study was financed by several companies, said the most expensive part of his approach was the rapid-screening test for bacteria, about $20. He said some United States cardiac departments had begun using the nasal ointment for all heart surgery patients, without screening them for bacteria.

Experts not involved in the studies said the added costs of the methods were dwarfed by the money saved preventing infections, which can run to tens of thousands of dollars per patient.

“Everybody wins on this,” Dr. Wenzel said. “Patients obviously have less morbidity, and hospitals and medical centers and insurers save a lot of money.”

Global charter cities

Development Aid | 06.01.2010

Global charter cities could alter our development strategies, says economist

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The chance to live in a new enviroment is attractive for many people around the globe

A renowned economist explains his visionary plan that he believes will raise underprivileged people around the world out of poverty quicker and better than classical foreign aid policies: new cities with new rules.

Paul Romer is an economist and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). He is one of the originators of the new growth theory and has been awarded the Horst Claus Recktenwald Prize in Economics. He was named one of the 25 most influential Americans by Time Magazine. He currently devotes all his time to his new project, "Charter Cities."

Deutsche Welle: You have developed a new concept which you believe can reduce global poverty and empower underprivileged people better than traditional development policies can. In a nutshell, what is your idea of the charter city?

Paul Romer: One thing that we know works extremely well for raising standards of living and wages for people is to let them move from countries that have bad rules to countries that have better rules. Now there aren't that many spaces in countries with good rules to take hundreds of millions of people, so the charter city idea is to create places that have good quality rules where hundreds of millions of people could go.

You argue that a good system of rules as is found in most Western societies is the key to economic prosperity and that such a rules-based system is attractive for people everywhere and therefore can basically be transplanted anywhere. How do you respond to critics who say you underestimate cultural and historical factors, and that therefore charter cities may not be viable on a large scale?

We know that people want access to these kinds of rule systems. Seven hundred million people around the world have said in response to survey questions that they would like to move permanently to a different country. So people want this. If you start with uninhabited land and invite people in to live under a new system of rules those rules can very quickly take hold and thrive.

Another criticism of your idea of the charter city is that it is essentially colonialism revisited. No one is forced to move or live in your charter city, and everyone is free to leave again, but essentially Western countries are once again financing, setting up and running places where poor people can only come to sell their labor. How do you counter that criticism?

If you think about the question, picture someone from a very poor country, a family, a couple of young children, a father and a mother, and picture them moving to Munich or Zurich or Vancouver. We don't think of that as colonial; we think of that as something that gives them opportunities that they really want. And this proposal is no more than saying if we can't let hundreds of millions of people go to those cities, let's create some new cities that are run like those cities where large numbers of people could go.

As examples of possible charter cities you mention a Canadian charter project in Cuba, an Australian project with Indonesia or a project in India. But how could a charter city work in the countries that really need help the most, i.e. the poorest countries in the world like Eritrea or Somalia?

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Hong Kong is a well known historic example of a charter cityThe example of Cuba and Canada is not so much a literal proposal as a way to picture how this could work. There happens to be a piece of land in Cuba where by treaty Cuba gave someone else the right to administer that land. Guantanamo Bay is actually administered by the United States. So countries like Somalia or Eritrea and other countries like that could sign treaties where relatively small pieces of land were assigned to other countries or perhaps a consortium of countries to set up new systems of rules there and create new cities in much the same way that the British created Hong Kong in a place where before they came no one lived.

For your concept to work, you need countries or private corporations to make large-scale investments. Those investors, of course, want to see a return on their investment. How do you intend to attract investors for such a venture with an all but certain outcome, and on the other hand, how do you make sure that the investors are not merely trying to make a quick profit?

This is why the rules are so important. Rules matter for families, because they want their children to be safe, they want to have a chance to get a job, they want rules that set up a good educational system. But the rules also matter for investors. A firm might come in and build a power system for a new city like this or build the infrastructure. Firms are quite willing to take market risks.

What firms do not want to undertake is political risk, the risk that some government will just expropriate their property or suddenly enact policies that destroy the value of their investments. So what the partner governments can do is make a credible commitment to rules that will remain in place for decades so that not only workers and families are attracted, but also investors and employers.

You've been promoting the concept of charter cities since last year and have received lots of praise but also criticism for your idea. Has any country so far signed up to your idea? Are there any concrete plans to develop the first charter city?

There are preliminary conversations with various governments. I tried this idea on possible participants in an arrangement like this and the reaction has been very positive. The most surprising thing I've learned is that the developing countries are very open to this idea. They have seen how special zones were very effective development strategies - in China in particular - and they have seen how fast growth can take place when you get policy right. China is now the new standard that countries are aspiring to and they are willing to try new things to get the kind of growth that they see in China.

[But] I think this would be an opportunity for governments that have not been as active on the world stage, including the government of Germany, to really establish a whole new way of interacting with the rest of the world as a partner that could be distinctive and very beneficial.

What role could Germany play in your concept of a charter city as a country with a comparatively brief colonial history?

One of the things that is interesting is that Germany has relatively good ties with some of its former colonies, like Namibia for example. So as opposed to other countries where there is lingering resentment and bad feeling, there's good feeling about the benefits that some of these countries receive from the German people. So I think this good will is an asset that you could put to work in the future.

How has the development community reacted to your proposal, since you believe that the charter city could benefit more people across the globe than classical development aid can?

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Mauritius is considered a role model for the concept of a successful charter city I think the right way to describe it is that the reactions have been somewhat polarized. On the one hand, there are many people who perceive the magnitude of the problem and the very slow pace of resolving that problem and who say your idea is very unusual and different, but it might be worth a try, because what we are doing right now isn't getting us where we want to go.

There are other people who are much more concerned, who say this is a very different approach, and it's too risky, and we shouldn't try this. But I think this gets the balance of the risks wrong. I think the biggest risk is that we persist with the conditions that we now have in many parts of the world, where there are hundreds of millions of people who are desperate to go someplace where they can put their energies to work and create a better future for their children. So I think there is very little risk in trying something different and we should be braver and we should have more imagination in solving this really pressing human problem.

Interview: Michael Knigge
Editor: Rob Mudge