The Coming Jobs War by Jim Clifton

Author:Jim Clifton [Clifton, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: jobs, business, unemployment, work, Clifton, entrepreneurship, war for jobs, cities
ISBN: 9781595620552
Publisher: Gallup Press
Published: 2011-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Customer Science

To win the jobs war, America needs to be the best in the world not only at entrepreneurship and innovation, but also at customer science. The country simply cannot win new jobs unless it uses the most advanced sciences in the world to create billions of new global customers.

Simply put, new global customers create new U.S. jobs. That’s why America needs to more than triple exports in the next five years — or continue on a downward slide. The battle for global customers will be the defining element in the new war for jobs and GDP growth. Whoever sells the goods and services, and whoever owns the companies that own the customers, wins. The United States needs to average a minimum 10% annual increase in exports over the next 30 years to maintain its leadership of the free world.

The big advantage China has over the United States right now is that China wins customers with low prices. This strategy really can work — not great, but OK for a while — because as long as America invents the new products and innovations, it can produce them for the first iteration and create millions of great jobs. But when China evolves to understanding customers and their needs better than U.S. companies do, the United States loses its advantage.

If America allows China — or India or anyone else — to get further into behavioral economics and customer science than it does, the country will lose the jobs war. That is what Toyota, Volkswagen, and other automakers did to U.S. car companies. They won by simply listening to customers better and then delivering what customers wanted at fair prices. America cannot afford to concede the science of customer insights or customer-centric innovations to China or any other foreign competitors or it risks losing to them. This is a “game over” moment for America.

Why? Because if those countries learn to provide better service and meet customers’ needs better, then customers won’t need U.S. retailers and supply chains to deliver products. China will set up its own retailers and supply chains, and God help America if that were to happen. Its best retailers, shops, banks, car dealers, restaurants, grocery stores, malls, and even movie theaters would be Chinese owned and controlled, which means that the best cash flows, margins, and stock values all become foreign owned.

There has already been a trend lately toward foreign-business takeovers, and the effects have been economically and psychologically devastating in headquarter cities. Belgian-based conglomerate InBev bought American icon Anheuser-Busch. When that happened, a little bit of St. Louis died. Brazilian-backed 3G Capital acquired Burger King, and a little bit of Miami died. When a national oil company in Venezuela bought out CITGO, a little bit of Houston died. When the Arcapita Bank, formerly First Islamic Investment Bank, bought a majority of Caribou Coffee, a little bit of Minneapolis died. No question, when foreign companies take over American businesses, something changes. Americans feel somehow that they’re not what they used to be.

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