How do we know if America has what it takes to be a leader in the new world, in the new middle?

1. Learn how to learn
2. Passion & Curiosity

• CQ + PQ > IQ
• "Nobody works harder at learning than a curious kid."
• Love kids.
• Can't light a fire unless you have a fire inside.
• If you can't feel the music, you'll never be able to play the music.

3. Good at managing or interacting with other people

• People skills are more valuable than computer skills p. 306

4. Nurture your right brain

• Right brain is context, emotional, expression, synthesis
• Forge relationships rather than executing transactions, tackle novel challenges instead of solving routine problems, synthesizing big picture rather than analyzing a single component.
• foreigners can do left brain work cheaper so we need to focus on right brain work
• high concept and high touch - High concept is the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty to detect patterns and opportunities to craft a satisfying narrative and come up with inventions. High touch is capacity to empathize to understand subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and illicit it in others, to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.
• Do something you love; that is intrinsically motivating.
• Georgia Tech Computer Program (p.311 - 315)
• Nine Threads
• "Schools need to embed these tools and concepts of collaboration into the education process"
• "It has to run through the whole curriculum. It can't be a single course otherwise we will never nurture a high enough percentage of the population to be competitive."

5. The Right Country

• We have flexible deregulated free market economy with lots of experimentation and competition between states and universities
• We have willingness to tear down and rebuild
• We have a network of research universities; inventions
• we have an efficient way of taking ideas and turning them into products and services
• we have the stock market to support businesses
• we have openness
• we protect intellectual property
• we have flexible labor laws
• we have the largest domestic consumer market
• we have political stability
• This translates to TRUST! We trust our currency, the our innovations are protected, and our justice system. Trust in these propels innovation!

p. 316 - "You [Americans] have all the things you need to get your people from the old middle to the new middle," said Nandan Nilekani of InfoSys. "If you get through this transition first, you will be kinds of the hill...[But] if people lose their nerve and protectionists come along and start building walls, you will [fail]. it is an act of faith - you have to believe that it will happen."

p. 322 - "Put all the above together and you have America's secret sauce - a mix of institutions, laws, and cultural norms that produce a level of trust, innovation, and collaboration that has enabled us to constantly renew our economy and raise our standard of living. There is nothing about the flat world - nothing - that Americans cannot handle, as long as we roll up our sleeves, educate our young people the right way for these times, and tend to and enrich the secrets of our sauce. So are we doing that? That what the next two chapters are about. But let me give you a hint: the answer is no."