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City Club of Cleveland - Myths and Realities in the Globalization Debate
 
 
 
Myths and Realities in the Globalization Debate: Why Current U.S. Policies Could be a Competitive Blunder

Vivek Wadhwa, Wertheim Fellow, Labor & Worklife Program, Harvard University

Globalization is the new reality and even top academics don't understand what its long term impact will be on U.S. competitiveness. What is clear is that our standard of living and economic leadership is at stake. Despite a lack of clear understanding of these issues, political and business leaders agree on the remedies and the actions we need to take to keep our edge.

Vivek Wadhwa, founder, chairman, and CEO of Relativity Technologies, will discuss the results of his research at Duke and Harvard, which shows that the data these remedies are based is flawed, and while the proposed remedies seem very good, they don't actually fix the disease we are trying to treat.

This Forum is in partnership with the Cleveland Council on World Affairs.

Wadhwa is also president of the Carolinas chapter of the The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE), a non-profit global network intended to foster entrepreneurship, and serves as an advisor to several local entrepreneurs looking to build companies from the ground up.

With the explosion of the internet, Wadhwa saw an opportunity to help businesses adapt to new and fast changing technologies, and started Relativity Technologies, which was named one of the 25 "coolest" companies in the world by Fortune Magazine for its vision in helping businesses "recycle" legacy systems. He has more than 25 years of experience in the software industry and has focused on the issue of coping with technological change since he was vice president of Information Services at CS First Boston (CSFB) and executive vice president and chief technology officer of Seer Technologies.

Wadhwa and Relativity have been featured extensively in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, San Jose Mercury News, Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Fast Company, and on CNET News.com, ZDNet, CFO.com, CNBC, and CNN.
January 25, 2008