I have no pleasure in reporting this news but I was able to see it at the first Munro Associates, open house. This is the death rattle somewhere: Detroit MBAs - at the first open house, there were three distinct groups; new business engineers and managers - they were taking furious notes because they’d never heard these lessons before old school Detroit - there to recall past acquaintances with Sandy but more like patting the red headed stepson on the head. Amen chorus - me China standing room only - the exact lectures Detroit treated as amusing were attended in Asia SOLD OUT and in China, shared with everyone who stood outside. They were taking notes furiously I know it is popular to claim China stole our patents and intellectual property. But the most important was how to unleash engineering skills and manufacturing discipline that Sandy taught and Musk occasionally exhibits. China is ascending because they learned how to unleash their technologists while Detroit got MBAs and sabotaging purchasing departments. Instead of competing, Detroit “outsourced” themselves into oblivion. Ford seems less bad with an adroit redirection of their EV battery section. But as for the rest, “burning down the house.” I don’t have an answer but feel more the frustration of Casandra who knew the future only to be patronized into oblivion. Bob Wilson
Getting an MBA degree sadly does more to encourage white collar criminals than it does to actually benefit society in the way people with an engineering degree can do... And the US has been declining a long time in that regard: A 2005 New York Times story reported that more than 600,000 engineers graduated from Chinese institutions compared to 70,000 in the United States — that's the number that got widely circulated a decade-plus ago. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5478159 China now graduates roughly 1.3 million engineers per year versus about 130,000 in the United States — a roughly 10-to-1 gap. Some analysts put it even higher, at 1.38 million Chinese engineering graduates annually, about seven times the U.S. figure. China graduates 1.3 million engineers per year, versus just 130,000 in the U.S. We need AI to bridge the gap | Fortune