Following on from my recent blog about “Is Manufacturing Coming Back to the US?” one of Morgan Stanley’s Investment guys, Ruchir Sharma, (Managing Director and the head of the Emerging Markets Equity team) has a book out called ‘Breakout Nations’ and in it he says:
“Every Investment idea is right for a while”
He was talking to Fareed Zakaria on his GPS program. Fareed cited that in the 1980’s investing in Japan made you a big winner until the 90’s came around. In the 1990’s it was all about Tech stocks. Then the Tech bubble burst. The Fad for the 2000’s was emerging markets.
And he asked are emerging markets submerging? I was interested mainly because the discussion lead to which countries invest most in R&D, and that is a leading indicator of success for economies worldwide. In fact, the numbers don’t lie. It looks like we may be entering a new phase with different leaders of growth, and it may be the US that becomes the new focus of manufacturing and innovation.
Since I was brought up in England and worked for three American Hi-Tech Companies in the UK, I was intrigued by the latest report to come out of the Centre for Industry and Government at the University of Cambridge titled “Public perceptions of manufacturing and efforts to rebalance the UK economy“.
So, back to the point of this blog. The folks at the Cambridge Centre, lead by Dr. Finbarr Livesey, Director, Centre for Industry and Government IfM, University of Cambridge, come up with some interesting perceptions concerning the UK. Nearly 1,500 respondents suggests that manufacturing has become more High Tech and they believe that there is a strong requirement for more highly skilled workers.
