PRODUCTS & SERVICES - Informatics - Services - Advanced Rresearch Networks as Milestones of Sustainability

P.E.M.I.S.

ADVANCED RESEARCH NETWORKS AS MILESTONES OF SUSTAINABILITY

On the verge of another era of "rude awakening" since the oil crisis of October 1973, the response of our societal and financial systems, are perhaps the best evidence of our inability to effectively assess our requirements for long term strategic planning. The term "effectively", becomes progressively more correlated to sustainability, albeit revealing that we have primarily conceived the necessity to vigorously preserve the structure and economic prosperity of our societies, as when subjected to a crisis imperative rather, than as an inherent mechanism embedded in our rational of overall management.

Another fallacy is that we may continue our growth, by mere further extension and progressive development of political systems and conventional practice used in the previous centuries. Although the historic trends of societies to maintain and preserve their momentum -and occasional illusion of effortless long lasting prosperity, should be also regarded as a realm innate to human nature, the demand to adapt to a living confluent with perpetual change, is a rising reality. The perceived escalation of anisotropies in our attempted restoring policies and actions, is not simply an inescapable adversity due to the outbound acceleration of events, but mostly due to our inability to timely comprehend the significance of terms like carrying capacity and sustainable growth. Our reduced ability to cope with unambivalent aetiologies of forthcoming decay, should likely share common source with our historically and ethically obscure domination over the environment, as a mere analogy to the way we impose our social, political and religious discrimination.

Whatsoever, under the incumbency to the pertaining global dynamics of policy and economic reality, we should prove able to interpret the situation per se, as well as discern the limits to what our existing models may produce. As power moves increasingly into the hands of business, the world is looking to corporations instead of governments to solve its problems. Although expected, the suggested response of the modern corporations to somehow best address crucial societal and environmental issues, by creating superior products and a decisive momentum toward social response capitalism for organizations brought about through leadership and innovation, is apparently synonymous to social and political naivety. Despite any evidence of benevolent intentions and intensions for wise contributions towards a more sustainable future, social capitalism cannot be considered an advanced vehicle towards this goal, as it would simply make sense for no one to become convinced that we can shop our way to a better planet. It is -non the less- essential to consider as a compulsory asset the key shift now occurring within corporations, as a more socially responsible way of defining social needs, rather than stimulating perceived social needs for products, that have traditionally been exploiting short-term impulses at the expense of long-term sustainability. Perhaps the most lasting contributions of the emerging global scale enterprises, will be their market re- orientation towards finding ways to compete beyond price and technical quality, by factoring ways to address pressing social concerns into the products they peddle, all over an ever smaller planet. It is a safe conclusion to assume, that Capitalism is progressively forced to advance to the point where multinational brands get graded and publicly accepted as well on their social performance.

Regardless to obvious deductions at the dawn of the era of post-conventional political systems thinking, the emerging facts reveal that when it comes to solutions -both local and global- businesses are now getting more powerful than governments. A few facts explain why corporations may even supersede governments and religions when it comes to providing the economic -and in some cases social- tools and services necessary to survive in the 21st century:

Fifty-two of the 100 biggest economies in the world are now corporations.
The 100 largest multinational corporations, such as GE, DuPont, Hewlett Packard, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart, now control about 28 percent of global foreign assets.
Three hundred multinational corporations now account for 25 percent of the world's total assets.
The annual sales revenue of each of the six largest multinational corporations now exceeds the GDPs of all but 21 countries in the world.

The deductions from these culminating trends, may not as yet be clearly obvious, but they are discernible. The next boom will be in the domain of knowledge and innovation domination and subsequent shift to instability of a far greater magnitude. The equilibrium in innovation enjoyed so far, largely managed by SMEs, small knowledge intensive enterprises and publicly funded research in academic and other public institutional sectors, will become progressively diminished. This alarming decay may be better realized by the exponentially growing requirements for seed capital and access to knowledge capital, that is required for sustaining innovation in pace with an acute technological transition; it is an inevitable conclusion that the small company and enterprise, the originator of innovation, will not be able to bear the innovation load required to remain profitable. As an expected follow up, the essential strong post of social coherency and equality -education as an equal opportunity- will also come at higher risk. A historically adept link that would engage the advanced synergy between the university/institution and small enterprise, could indeed offer the viable alternative fore sought, however, the fact also remains that for Europe, this still remains largely a noble vision trapped in the Lisbon proclamation.

The above described evolution of events, is clearly plausible and visible, yet further speculation lies well beyond scope of this report, serving the mere anticipation to highlight a path and feasible methods towards a future of sustainable welfare and peace rather, than merely one of non-commensurate economic growth.