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The Five Mental Shifts Required to Rebuild America's Economic Competitiveness

-- As Determined by the US Intelligence Community's Socrates Project --


July 9, 2010

Executive Summary: To ensure the economic health of the US and its people, US decision-
makers in government, industry, and academia must address America's rapidly declining
competitiveness, the source of the present economic crisis. To effectively address the decline, the
decision-makers must make major shifts in their thinking: They must question what is true
economic competitiveness and what are the means required to generate it. They must see that issues
like trade policy, IP laws, and infrastructure upgrades must be addressed with those means in mind.
They must acknowledge that the world is on the verge of the next revolutionary step in generating
competitiveness and that to remain a super-power the US must lead this next revolutionary step.
And they need to understand that leading the next revolutionary step does not violate the principles
of democracy on which the US was founded.

Introduction:
Although the recently passed economic stimulus legislation will help mitigate the adverse
impacts of the economic crisis in the short-term, it does not have the ability to effectively address
the underlying source of the US economic crisis--America's declining ability to compete in both
domestic and foreign markets.

Background:
Under the Reagan the administration within the US intelligence community, a classified
program, the Socrates Project, was initiated to address America's declining competitiveness.
Socrates had a two-fold mission. The first was to determine the true source of America's declining
competitiveness, and the second was to develop the means necessary to address the source of the
problem.

The Socrates project team knew that to develop the means to address the problem, their
investigation of the source of the problem had to go beyond obvious one-liners—“Japan, Inc.”—and
go beyond accepted solutions—“level the playing field.” The Socrates solution took advantage of
intelligence available through all the sources of the intelligence community, for a complete, holistic
view and understanding of competition worldwide, generating for the first time in the history of
mankind a bird's eye view and understanding of all competition worldwide.

This bird's eye view of competition went far beyond, in terms of scope and completeness, the
extremely narrow slices of data that were available to the professors, professional economists, and
consultants that addressed the issue of competitiveness. As a result, the conclusions that the
Socrates team derived about competitiveness in general and about the US in particular were in
almost all cases in direct opposition to what the professors, economists and consultants had been
saying for years, and to what had been accepted as irrefutable underlying truths by decision-makers
throughout the US.

The Socrates team then went on to use this understanding of the source of the US
competitiveness problem to develop the means that would be effective in truly rebuilding America's
competitiveness.

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Issues:
American financial institutions and Americans in general have been basing their financial
decisions on the belief that American companies are sufficiently competitive in the foreign and
domestic markets to generate consistently the stable positive cash flow that the US and its citizens
have learned to expect and rely upon for many years. But, in reality, for the past fifty years, many
of America's companies have maintained stable or increasing positive cash flow, not because they
are truly competitive, but only because they have very adroitly played economic shell-games. As a
result, American financial institutions and the American people have greatly overleveraged, in an
unsustainable fashion, the US economy, resulting in the Wall Street meltdown and the mortgage
crisis, which in turn have sent an economic tsunami around the world.

The relaxing of federal regulations over the last few years have enabled decision-makers in
financial institutions and many Americans to make what are now in hind-sight considered highly
risky decisions. But if the American companies' positive cash flow had been based upon true
economic competitiveness rather than economic shell-games, the decisions of the American people
and the country's financial institutions would not be in question today and would have not generated
the economic crisis we now must aggressively address if the country is to survive.

To effectively address America's economic crisis we must do more than just mitigate the present
adverse impacts of the crisis via cash infusions and tax breaks and just reestablish federal
regulations that will provide more accountability for the decisions of our financial institutions. We
must aggressively address the underlying source of the economic crisis which is the decimated
abilities of American companies to compete in both domestic and foreign markets.

What was discovered in the Socrates Project was that to rebuild America's economic
competitiveness, key decision-makers throughout the US in federal and state governments, industry,
academia, and the press must make five significant shifts in their thinking:

#1 The US must change from economic-based planning back to technology-based planning.

#2 Technology-based planning is the foundation needed to address the wide range of functions in
the private and public sectors that comprise the US economic competitiveness issue.

#3 The world is poised for the next revolutionary step in technology-based planning, the
Automated Innovation Revolution, and for the US to regain its ability to compete economically
with its technology-based planning, it must generate and then lead the Automated Innovation
Revolution.

#4 A Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool were initially developed within the Socrates
Project of the US Federal Government, and then refined within the private sector, and these
make it possible for the US to generate and then lead the Automated Innovation Revolution.

#5 To generate the maximum economic competitive advantage from the Automated Innovation
Revolution for the US, the Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool must be used to develop
symbiotic technology strategies at the country, state and organization levels, enabling the full
range of US resources to be utilized in a coherent, flexible, and independent fashion, not in
conflict with America's open, democratic society.

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Shift #1 The US must change from economic-based planning back to technology-based planning.

Technology-based planning is what was used to build America into a super-power. The focus
on creating the very best product or service—in other words using technology to be best at
satisfying customer needs—was a focus that kept US organizations competitive. It is this focus—
this technology-based planning—that is what China and India are presently using to build
themselves into the next great super-powers. The gradual shift after World War II by US
organizations to economic-based planning—a focus on economic maneuvering to maximize the
bottom-line—is what caused America's ability to compete to deteriorate over the last thirty-plus
years. Yes, the deterioration has been going on for that long, but because we have been looking
solely at the economic side of the equation, we have not seen the deterioration.

In economic-based planning the foundation of every decision within the organization is a matter
of how to most effectively acquire and utilize funds to generate the maximum profit for the
organization. This is what is taught at all US business schools and what has been used within
almost all US organizations since the end of World War II.

In technology-based planning the basis of decisions is how to most effectively exploit—acquire


and utilize–technology to excel at satisfying a customer need to generate a competitive
advantage. In tech-based planning the technology is what is actually being manipulated.
Technology is any application of science to accomplish a function, whether the science is cutting-
edge or well established, whether the function is a head-line grabbing new product or service or
something significantly more mundane. (Then, on top of this foundation of technology
exploitation, an organization can execute the full range of other types of planning like economic
optimization).

The challenge in shifting to technology-based planning is getting decision-makers to truly see


the difference between technology-based and economic-based planning. Maneuvering in the
economics has been a fundamental, core concept to Americans since the end of WWII, and is so
ingrained for American decision-makers that it is not even recognized as a premise with the
potential of being ineffective.

Many US companies and other US organizations will adamantly maintain that they do
execute "technology planning" but in actuality what they are doing is executing economic-based
planning for technology. Their planning consists of how to most effectively use available monies to
fund their various R&D efforts. What they are actually manipulating are the funds, not the
technology, but they will be hard-pressed to understand the difference. In technology-based
planning one manipulates technology that is internal and external to the organization (or region) like
pawns on a chess board.

This manipulation of the worldwide technology like pawns on a chessboard is what China has
done and continues to do with an unmatched level of sophistication and aggressiveness to transform
China into a world super-power, and to accomplish this objective with a speed that is unparalleled
in the history of the world.

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US companies, the White House, the US Congress, and various Washington think-tanks and
organizations each have developed plans for rebuilding America's economic competitiveness, and
strongly maintain that their plans contains the necessary actions relative to science and technology
(S&T). But in all cases these plans are economic-based.

Each plan addresses science and technology for economic competitiveness as if it is nothing
more than a research and development (R&D) and education foot-race among countries; each
country attempting to “out-R&D” and "out-educate" all the other countries in order to get to the
finish line first (i.e., get the next set of science and technology breakthroughs first). And winning
the foot-race requires nothing more than America increasing its R&D and education spending via
initiatives like tax breaks to the companies and the direct injection of federal dollars…. in other
words, manipulation of the economics of the situation, not the manipulation of the technology,
which is the foundation of the country's and the competitors' competitive advantage.
____________________________________________________________

What is key to understand about this required shift in thinking is:


(a) the true, fundamental and radical difference between maneuvering in the economics as
executed in economic-based planning and maneuvering in the technology as executed in
technology-based planning,
(b) that economic-based planning is so pervasive and such a core-concept throughout all US
public and private organizations that its existence does not even register in the minds of the
decision-makers let alone the thought that it could be ineffective and the source of the
problem, and
(c) the fact that the determination that technology exploitation, via technology-based planning is
the foundation of all competitive advantage, as well as all of the other determinations of the
five mental shifts were made from a one-of-a-kind, all-source intelligence bird's eye view,
holistic understanding of all competition worldwide.

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Shift #2 Technology-based planning is the foundation needed to effectively address the wide
range of functions in the private and public sectors that comprise the US economic
competitiveness issue.

Because technology exploitation is the foundation of all competitive advantage, technology-


based planning is the most effective basis for addressing the wide range of functions which
comprise the US economic competitiveness issue. Using technology-based planning to address
these functions accomplishes two critical objectives. First, it enables each function to be addressed
in the most effective way possible for increasing America's and American organizations' abilities to
generate and maintain economic competitiveness. Second, because all of the functions are being
addressed from the same basis, it enables all the functions to be executed in a coherent manner,
further increasing the functions effectiveness in driving US economic competitiveness. It is literally
impossible for the US to effectively address challenges like China's rapidly expanding worldwide
economic dominance, if functions like US trade policy, IP laws and the upgrading of the country's
infrastructure are not addressed in a coherent, highly integrated fashion.

Private sector--In the private sector, technology-based planning is the correct and therefore
most effective basis for decision making throughout the US companies and even not-for-profit
organizations. Using technology-based planning as the basis of decision-making throughout an
organization, takes the process for generating a competitive advantage (where generating a
competitive advantage is the ultimate objective of each and every decision within an organization)
from what is thought of and addressed as
fragmented and fully at the whims of the illogical and undefinable factors of the market and
the undefinable and unknowable "secret sauces" of the competitors, and therefore highly
inefficient,
to one that is
logical, systematic, and therefore highly efficient and effective.

In addition, using technology-based planning as the foundation for the full range of decisions
within the organization (e.g., marketing, R&D, human resources) enables the organization to
achieve the heretofore unobtainable "holy grail" of the MBA programs--the ability to integrate the
decision-making for all functions so that the resulting decisions are coherent rather then disjointed.

Public sector--In the public sector the functions to be addressed include, but are far from
limited to, (a) trade agreements, policies and taxation and the enforcement of the agreements, (b)
the US patent system and the intellectual property laws, (c) vocational training and education, (d)
university education and R&D, and (e) infrastructure upgrades. To have the level of effectiveness
required to support the US and its organizations' ability to generate and maintain the required
competitive advantage relative to countries like China and India, these functions cannot be
addressed with economic-based planning as they presently are. They must be based on technology-
based planning.

For example, take the case of US trade agreements and policies. In the case of a country like
China, its trade agreements and policies are an integral part of China's grand economic development
technology strategy for the country–and as such the agreements and policies are technology-based.
China's trade agreements and policies are not economic-based, and they are not fragmented.

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China's trade agreements and policies are designed to support China's and its organizations'
acquisition and utilization of the worldwide technology to generate and maintain the maximum
economic competitive advantage. Other factors and issues come into play, but it is the effective
exploitation of the technology (where technology is correctly defined as any application of science
to accomplish a function) that provides China and its organizations' with a competitive advantage
and therefore is the underlying basis for the agreements and policies.

To effectively address China's and other countries' trade agreements and policies, which are
technology-based, the US' trade agreements and policies must also be technology-based.

One of the strongly inherent problems with the US' purely economic-based planning approach
to trade is the country's inability to understand the trade policies and agreements that are
technology-based. To a US trade official whose entire view of competitiveness and trade is
economic-based, the trade policies and agreements of a country like China can be more than a little
mystifying in terms of their content and their results.

For example, the US trade official may identify the very strong trade barriers erected by China
for a particular, very small new industry where the Chinese companies of the industry have full
access to the US market, but due to trade barriers the US companies of the same industry have very
little access to the Chinese market. With this knowledge, the US trade official will determine the
present and make some projections as to the dollar value impact these trade barriers will have on the
future trade balance between the two countries. Then armed with what he or she believes is a full
understanding of China's actions and the actions’ impacts, the trade official will make some
determinations on how to compensate for this impact on the trade balance between the two
countries (e.g., negotiate the expansion of US company access to other Chinese markets).

The US trade official thinks that the China trade officials are not very wise to spend so much
time and energy erecting strong trade barriers for an industry whose (a) maximum dollar value in
potential trade is so small that it does not even register in the reported trade balance between the
two countries, and (b) projected economic growth in the next five years is not expected to be
significant. The US trade official also suspects that the Chinese officials may have instituted the
trade barriers as bargaining chips to use to open up other larger US markets, but again the US
official see this as very unwise because the small near and long term dollar value of the trade for
this small industry is not very compelling.

From the US trade official's perspective the situation is basically an economic shell game where
the only real measure of success is the resulting positive or negative impact in dollars on the near
and in some cases longer term trade balance between the various countries and what is measured,
tracked and maneuvered to accomplish this success is the economics of the trade situation.

But from the technology-based perspective, the actions of the Chinese and the resulting impact
on the US look radically different. The Chinese trade barriers for the small industry are part of a
much larger trade agenda which in turn is part of the country's overall grand economic development
technology strategy with its various aspects in education, R&D and other functions with the result
being the coherent utilization of a large range of resources through these various mechanisms to
accomplish an objective that is way beyond in scope and size the small industry where the trade
barriers were put in place.

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____________________________________________________________

What is key to understand about this required shift in thinking is:


(a) For companies and other private organizations to be most competitive, they must switch from
their present economic-based planning, which is the basis of all the decision-making
throughout the organization, to technology-based planning.
(b) Technology is any application of science to accomplish a function. The science can be very
leading edge or very well established and the function to be accomplished can be highly news
worth or significantly more mundane. As a result, technology-based planning is the most
effective foundation for decision-making for all size organizations within all industries.
(c) The full range of functions that are the responsibility of the US public sector, from trade
policy to patent system, will be highly ineffective in supporting the economic competitiveness
of the US and its organizations if they continue to be based on economic-based planning. To
have the required level of effectiveness these functions must be addressed using technology-
based planning.

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Shift #3 The world is poised for the next revolutionary step in technology-based planning, the
Automated Innovation Revolution, and for the US to regain its ability to compete
economically with its tech-based planning, it must generate and then lead the
Automated Innovation Revolution.

From the Socrates bird's eye view it was also seen that in the fifty plus years since the end of
WWII, when the US shifted away from technology-based planning, the means to execute tech-based
planning had evolved and become significantly more sophisticated. As a result, it was obvious that
for the US to remain an economic super-power it could not just execute tech-based planning as it
had before WWII, or even try to adopt the means used by countries like Japan, India, and China.
Rather the US had to significantly move beyond how all countries of the world were executing their
technology-based planning.

To determine how to leap-frog the technology-based planning of other countries, the Socrates
team reviewed the history of technology exploitation and determined that technology-based
planning makes a revolutionary leap forward every few hundreds of years, and that mankind is
poised for the next leap—the Automated Innovation Revolution.

In the twentieth century’s automated production revolution, the processes of production were
quantified and standardized so that they could be automated. The same products were produced,
but efficient production made them abundant and cheap. The impact of the Automated Innovation
Revolution on mankind will be greater than the impact of the automated production revolution.
Today the process for technology innovation (i.e., technology acquisition and utilization) is
haphazard and therefore inefficient—slow and costly. In the Automated Innovation Revolution, the
process for acquiring and utilizing technology will be quantified so that it can be automated. The
automation of the innovation process will enable the exploitation of technology to be executed with
an unprecedented level of speed, efficiency and agility.

Speed--Automated innovation will enable an endless, rapid stream of previously unimaginable


products and services to be produced and provided that will be based upon technology
breakthroughs being generated and utilized at an astronomically fast rate. For example, minimum
uncertainty both in the planning of the cross-pollinations that generate technology breakthroughs
and in the knowledge of the attributes of the resulting technologies that dictate their utilization
results in extremely high execution speeds.

Efficiency--Automated innovation will enable services to be provided and products to be


produced that possess the strengths to dominate entire markets and even complete industries from
relatively small amounts of resources. For example, minimum uncertainty in planning the
exploitation of technology results in very precise and accurate technology maneuvers, which are
extremely efficient in utilizing the full range of resources to generate a competitive advantage.

Agility--Automated innovation will enable services to be provided and products to be produced


that consistently satisfy customer needs better than the competition, in order to acquire and maintain
the maximum competitive advantage no matter how the world evolves. For example, having
minimum uncertainty in knowing the four dimensions of technologyspace will provide an
organization or a region with the agility to adroitly out-maneuver all competitors in the acquisition
and utilization of worldwide technology to consistently eliminate competitors' ability to acquire a

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competitive advantage while generating the maximum competitive advantage for the organization
or region.

The combination of speed, efficiency and agility provided by the Automated Innovation will
enable an organization or a region to consistently out-maneuver the competition in the acquisition
and utilization of the technology (i.e., the exploitation of the technology). And, because technology
exploitation is the foundation of all competitive advantage, this means that the Automated
Innovation will enable an organization or a region to out-maneuver the competition in the full range
of resources.

The Automated Innovation Revolution will occur in the very near term. If the US generates and
then leads the Automated Innovation Revolution, the US and its organizations will be executing
technology-based planning which will far surpass the effectiveness of the tech-based planning being
executed by all other countries and organizations worldwide—the US and its organizations will
consistently outmaneuver all other countries and organizations worldwide in the acquisition and
utilization of the worldwide technology to acquire and maintain the required competitive advantage.
The US and its organizations will be able to quickly rebuild and maintain their economic health for
many generations to come.
____________________________________________________________

What is key to understand about this required shift in thinking is:


(a) The impact that the next revolution of Automated Innovation will have on all society will be
much greater than the impact of other revolutions like the scientific revolution.
(b) If the US generates and leads the Automated Innovation Revolution, we will have the ability
to quickly rebuild America's economic strength so that we will continue to be a superpower
for many generations. If on the other hand, another country generates and leads the
Automated Innovation Revolution, we will have no chance of maintaining our standard of
living, let alone remain a superpower.

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Shift #4 A Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool were initially developed within the
Socrates Project of the US federal government and then refined within the private
sector, and these make it possible for the US to generate and then lead the Automated
Innovation Revolution.

Technologyspace is the full set of present and "future" technologies whose four dimensions
dictate how the technology can be acquired and utilized for a competitive advantage. The
Technologyspace Map is a computer-based, accurate, precise, and detailed real-time representation
of the complete four-dimensional technologyspace and not a model (i.e., a simplified representation
of technologyspace).

The Map Navigation Tool, like the Technologyspace Map is computer-based and enables the
Techspace Map to be navigated in an automated fashion to produce technology strategies that
acquire and utilize the present and future worldwide technologies in an unprecedented, extremely
efficient, and astronomically rapid and agile fashion—automated innovation.

It is important to note that a strategy is not the same as long-range or centralized planning. It is
not a vision statement, or the result of an exercise in consensus building or a matter of identifying
trends to capitalize on. Also, a strategy is not a shopping list of targets (i.e., a list of government
programs to be funded, products to be produced, or customers to be focused on). However, in
government, business and academia, these incorrect definitions of strategy are used more frequently
than the correct definition of strategy.

A strategy is a coherent, interconnected set of concrete action items for offensively and
defensively acquiring and utilizing a limited resource more effectively than a competitor, to bring
about a specific objective relative to the competitor. A strategy is fluid in nature and in most cases
acquires its strength from positioning, flexibility and balance.

A strategy has a much higher degree of success than an approach like a shopping list of
programs that an organization (or a government) should focus its efforts on.

The pool of resources that both an organization and its competitor must draw from and then
utilize to achieve their respective objectives is limited in size1. As a result, for the organization to
achieve the highest degree of success, the organization must both maximize the efficiency of the
organization's acquisition and utilization of the resources from the pool and minimize the efficiency
of competitor's acquisition and utilization of the resources--in simple terms, the less of the limited
resources the competitor exploits, the more is available for the organization to exploit.

To most effectively maximize an organization's efficiency and minimize the competitor's


efficiency, the organization must execute a set of offensive and defensive actions that act in concert
in the maximization and minimization of the organization's and competitor's exploitation
efficiencies respectively--the defensive actions hold the competitor's exploitation at bay while the
offensive actions are free to exploit the resource.

The final result is the organization is able to maximize the gap between the organization's and
the competitor's respective efficiencies for acquiring and utilizing the limited resource, no matter
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If the pool of the resource was not limited in size, there would be no need for a strategy.

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how the world evolves, to have maximum success in achieving the objective--the organization out-
maneuvers the competitor's exploitation of the resource at every turn.

In contrast, a pseudo-strategy that is basically a shopping list of targets on which an


organization (or a government) should focus its effort is only addressing the organization's resource
instead of the vast world-wide pool of that resource. It relies upon educated guessing instead of
maneuvering to exploit the resource, and the educated guessing exploits the resource in a
fragmented rather than coherent fashion. The competitor is free to adroitly maneuver within the
complete pool of that resource, which includes the portion of the resource within the organization,
and to exploit the limited resource in a coherent, offensive and defensive manner relative to the
organization, while the organization is attempting to guess the future to determine how to best
exploit its own resource.

In a strategy for economic competitiveness, as was determined in the Socrates Project, the
limited resource is technology, and a technology strategy enables an organization or a country to
consistently out-maneuver the competition in the acquisition and utilization of worldwide
technology for a competitive advantage.

The Socrates Project produced an early version of the Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool
and proved the Map's and the Map Navigation Tool's feasibility and utility by developing
technology strategies for various high priority government programs. As a result of this initial
work, President Reagan had an executive order drafted creating a new government organization for
the Socrates Project, answering directly to the White House, with the mandate of giving all US
federal government organizations and US private organizations access to the Techspace Map and
Map Navigation Tool for their development of technology strategies.

Since the termination of the Socrates Project, the design of the Techspace Map Navigation Tool
has been considerably upgraded via a private sector initiative.

The upgraded Map Navigation Tool displays the pertinent portion of the 4-D Techspace Map to
the decision-maker in a manner that enables the decision-maker to see graphically and holistically
the full range of opportunities and constraints within techspace that could be used offensively or
defensively by the organization or the competition to generate a competitive advantage.

The decision-maker is then able to explore each of the opportunities and constraints both
individually and in combinations, see the competitor's potential responses to the organization's
exercising the opportunities and constraints, and then the resulting competitive advantage that will
be generated by the organization (or the competitor)—all viewed graphically and holistically on the
display.

From there, the decision-maker builds a complete technology strategy that consists of a coherent
set of interconnected actions for offensively and defensively acquiring and utilizing technology
(which includes R&D internal to the organization) to generate and maintain the maximum
competitive advantage for the organization.

The result is that the process of innovation (i.e., the acquisition and utilization of technology) is
automated for unprecedented speed, efficiency and agility, such that the organization (or a region or

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a country) can acquire and maintain the maximum competitive advantage relative to all competitors
worldwide

Because technology exploitation is the foundation of all competitive advantage and acquiring a
competitive advantage is the objective of all functions within all organizations, the technology
strategies developed from the Technologyspace Map and Map Navigation Tool are the most
effective foundation for decision-making at all levels, for all functions, throughout all types and
sizes of organizations.

By the US generating and then leading the Automated Innovation Revolution via the Techspace
Map and Map Navigation Tool, the country will have the ability to execute the functions discussed
in mental shift #2 (e.g., infrastructure upgrades, trade policies, education planning) in a manner that
is vastly more effective for generating an economic competitive advantage than what any other
country (including China and India) can accomplish anytime in the foreseeable future.
____________________________________________________________

What is key to understand about this required shift in thinking is:


(a) A strategy is not the same as centralized planning or a list of targets to address.
(b) A strategy is a coherent, interconnected set of concrete action items for offensively and
defensively acquiring and utilizing a limited resource more effectively than a competitor to
bring about a specific objective relative to the competitor. A strategy is fluid in nature and in
most cases acquires its strength from positioning, flexibility and balance.
(c) The Techspace Map and the Map Navigation Tool for generating technology strategies are
feasible.
(d) The Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool will cause the Automated Innovation
Revolution, with all its ramifications to occur.
(e) The Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool will enable the US to address functions like
trade policy, IP laws, education, and the patent system with an efficiency and a level of
coherence for generating economic competitiveness that far surpasses that which can be
achieved by any other country in the foreseeable future.
(f) Because technology is correctly defined as any application of science to accomplish a
function, the Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool are applicable to all industries at all
levels of technology sophistication--from high-tech to "no-tech" to everything in between.

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Shift #5 To generate the maximum economic competitive advantage from the Automated
Innovation Revolution for the US, the Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool
must be used to develop symbiotic technology strategies at the country, state and
organization levels enabling the full range of US resources to be utilized in a
coherent, flexible, and independent fashion, not in conflict with America's open,
democratic society.

The Socrates team reviewed how the most competitive countries of the world deployed
technology strategies and determined that symbiotic deployment was most effective in generating
an economic competitive advantage for the country and its organizations. The deployment of
symbiotic tech strategies accomplishes two functions. First, it enables the full range of resources
throughout the country to be exploited in a highly coherent yet flexible and independent fashion.
And second, it enables resources outside of the country to be acquired and utilized with the
country's internal resources in a coherent and thereby efficient manner. The results are that the
country and all its organizations acquire and maintain the maximum economic competitive
advantage over their competitors, and they accomplish it without violating US anti-trust law or the
concepts of democracy and a free society that the US is based upon.

A symbiotic technology strategy


- Enables each organization to exploit to some extent the technologies of the other
organizations for its competitive advantage and therefore success, and
- The success of each organization, which further increases its technologies, increases the
success of the other organizations by giving them more technology to exploit, so that,
- Each organization is willing to have its technology exploited, to some degree, by the other
organizations.
The result is that the technologies of the organizations are exploited in a highly coherent yet flexible
and independent fashion. But, because the exploitation of technology is the foundation of all
competitive advantage, when the technologies are exploited coherently, the organizations' other
resources (e.g., manpower, funds) are also exploited in a highly coherent yet flexible fashion.

In addition, because the US and its organizations would act as a single coherent resource,
partnering with one of the US organizations would be highly attractive for foreign organizations,
because they would be, in effect, partnering with the full range of resources throughout the US. For
the US, the resources of the external organizations would be efficiently integrated into the US grand
economic development symbiotic technology strategy for the maximum benefit for the US and its
organizations.

The key to developing symbiotic technology strategies in the US where individual


independence is so prized and exercised is the ability of the decision-makers of the organizations to
see in concrete terms how they will benefit by working symbiotically with other organizations.
(This situation contrasts the pseudo-consortia of the 1980s in the US in which businesses and other
organizations were expected to cooperate and commit significant resources based upon vague
inferences of ill-defined future benefits.) The Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool will
accomplish this function and do it so that anti-trust laws or the spirit of the democracy are not
violated.

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Another lesser, but very important key to having symbiotic technology strategies developed and
executed throughout the US is the level of usability of the Techspace Map and Map Navigation
Tool. Because the Map Navigation Tool interface is graphic and highly intuitive (like a video
game), decision-makers in all industries with all levels of technology sophistication will be able
quickly learn and easily use the Map and Nav Tool for decision-making. In addition, decision-
making with the Map and Nav Tool will be vastly quicker and easier, and will produce decisions
that are far superior for acquiring and maintaining a competitive advantage.

As a result, decision-makers throughout the US will naturally, but quickly and efficiently, adopt
symbiotic technology strategies as their bases for decision making.

It is important to keep in mind that, put in simple terms, when a US company is in competition
with a Chinese company, it is actually in competition with China itself. The Chinese company,
depending upon its size and criticality to the future of China is supported by a large and wide range
of public and, in some sense, private Chinese organizations. The actions of the public and private
Chinese companies are coordinated to provide the support required to ensure the success of the
Chinese company.

The coordination that results is not the same as the rigid, lock-step formation execution that was
the hallmark of the old Soviet Union's centralized planning. Rather the coordination executed by
the Chinese is a softer, more flexible execution where cooperation amongst the various Chinese
organizations is implemented either via direct control by the Chinese government of the key
industry companies or in the case of the non-key industry companies is induced via the
government's control of resources and subtle pressure to conform. But the result is that a US
company is not "taking on" a Chinese company in the marketplace, the US company is taking on
China.

The symbiotic deployment of technology strategies within a country


accomplishes the opposite of the objectives of the Chinese government and
the old Soviet government. In those governments, the objective is or was to
centralize the control of the economic power of the countries into the
respective national governments and out of the hands of the citizens. In the
case of symbiotic deployment of technology strategies, the economic power
and future of the country is put largely in the hands of the citizens of the
country. Symbiotic deployment provides the citizens throughout the country
with the power to control their own economic health and thereby destiny.

Organizations of a government do have critical and unique functions to


accomplish, but government organizations work symbiotically with the
citizens of the country, who control their own economic health and destiny,
to together determine the economic health and thereby the destiny of their
country.

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Symbiotic deployment of the technology strategies within the US via the Techspace Map and
Map Navigation Tool will enable the US companies and all other types of US organizations to
utilize the full range of US resource with a level of coherence and flexibility that far surpasses that
achieved by the Chinese organizations, all the while not minimizing to any degree the US
organizations' ability to act in a totally independent manner.

____________________________________________________________

What is key to understand about this required shift in thinking is:


(a) Symbiotic deployment multiplies the economic competitive advantage, for the region and the
organizations of the region, generated by the technology strategies developed from the
Automated Innovation Revolution of the Techspace Map and Map Navigation Tool.
(b) The development and execution of symbiotic technology strategies does not violate anti-trust
laws, or the nature of a democratic society.
(c) Symbiotic deployment of technology strategies does not just negate, but surpasses for the US
and its organizations, the competitive advantage that the Chinese organizations now have by
the Chinese government coordinating the support amongst the Chinese organizations for the
country's and the Chinese organization's competitive advantage.
(d) And lastly, symbiotic deployment provides citizens throughout the country with the power to
control their own economic health and thereby destiny.

Conclusion:

In most cases the solution to a problem means just refining what has already been done. In a
few cases the solution requires the participants to make a shift in their thinking on how things
operate to have an understanding of the problem and the required solution. In our case, the solution
requires the participants to make five significant shifts in their thinking in order to truly understand
the problem, the solution, and then execute the solution.

Getting decision-makers to make these five major shifts in their thinking is the challenge that
we must and will overcome to provide the US with a bright future.

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