The Return to Industry: When Europe Awakes

The founder of the Taiwanese Acer electronics corporation has just told American microcomputer builders that they will disappear within the next 20 years. He is undoubtedly basing his argument on numerous regrettable precedents and particularly on the practice, sadly widespread in the United States and also in Europe, of outsourcing and relocating industrial production to emerging low-wage economies. This is a practice that is too common, asserts André-Yves Portnoff, in the old Western countries, which believe they can retain the “nobler” tasks of research and innovation for themselves while offloading the more low-level functions of manufacture to others. André-Yves Portnoff condemns this illusion here and shows how such a strategy is ultimately suicidal, both at the economic and the social levels (particularly with regard to jobs), since we cannot on a long-term basis divide up functions that form a coherent system without killing off our own capacities for innovation. Having outlined the grievous effects of this widespread practice, he explains that it is a product of a total lack of understanding of what a “knowledge economy” means (though he himself prefers to speak of a “revolution of intelligence” and a “rise of immaterial factors”). Basing his argument on numerous examples, Portnoff shows lastly that a rebirth of Europe is possible and that the key to success is… a return to industry, but an industry not in any sense in thrall to the whims of shareholders solely preoccupied with immediate financial returns, but supported by investors with the patience required for an industrial revival based on the intelligence and collective resolve of all those within the company and its stakeholders.