Is the U.S. creating its own competitive disadvantage when it comes to CI?
While the U.S. is still considered a technology leader I have to wonder how much longer we will continue to be when I think of the competitive disadvange that we have constructed for ourselves in the U.S. by fhaving an "English" only attitude.
I think of Dr. Jay Gillette's phrase "Information is knowledge in motion" and have to wonder by having this monolingual focus that we are putting big rocks, at least for us, on the information highway. I say this because today much of the scientific literature is published in English language journals, nearly all of which are usually very accesable electronically. Because many non-US scientists and engineers speak and read English and have access to the internet this means they can get to and use the information located in the US. However, I had to ask myself could I do the same thing if say I wanted to see what new technology the Chinese or Inidans were researching and reporting in their internal professional journals. The answer I belive is a resounding no and I would guess that the number of US engineers and scientists that could is not very large and this is assuming that one could get to Chinese or Indian professional jjournals over the internet. To me this raises serious competitie intelligence issues since not only does this "one and a half way highway" we have created keep us from knowing what advances are being made externally but may also allow these advances to only be shared amoung themselves. Hence, I would say that we are putting ourselves at a competive disadvantage relative to competive intelligence.