Chapter One: Avoid Overreliance on Basic Factors
Summary from book p. 37

The belief we examined first in the story of the Colombian flowers and have explored in greater detail here -- that countries and companies can compete globally based on factor advantages such as natural resources, cheap wages, or geographic location--dominates economic activity throughout the developing world. The challenge that business and political leaders of those countries face is two-fold: (1) to develop more sophisticated sources of advantage that are not so easily imitated, and (2) to realize that depleting natural resources and suppressing wages will not lead to sustainable, long-term wealth creation. It is critical for leaders to develop the capacity to think about the future and to move out of such unattractive "factor-based" industries. That will require a fundamental reassessment of how competitiveness is understood. The sources of growth for developing nations are hidden behind the abundance of natural resources that so many of them possess.

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