Ladies and gentlemen! Please welcome America`s new hope for economic recovery. The one, the only-Mickey Mouse.
No, I`m not setting you up. No cynicism intended here.
It`s just that I`m genuinely excited about Euro Disneyland, the $4.4 billion theme park that opens Sunday outside Paris.
I think Mickey`s arrival in Europe can give us a valuable lesson on how to get the U.S. economy moving again. The little guy with the big ears is pointing the way, squeaking something we need to hear about America`s role in the new global economy.
And this, I think, is what Monsieur Mickey is saying: ”Get busy exporting ideas, not just things.”
Oh, we need to keep on exporting things. We`ve got to continue selling the nations of the world our tractors and telephones, our soybeans and washing machines.
But we also must understand that a fundamental economic shift is taking place. Because of advances in jet travel, bulk transport and satellite communications, things can be made just about anywhere. Multinational corporations shop the world for the lowest-cost materials and labor. High-cost producers and the people who work for them can win temporary reprieves by persuading their governments to impose tariffs and import quotas. But long term, most low-skill assembly jobs are headed for low-wage places such as Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey.
So what`s a high-wage country like the U.S. to do? How do we add value that cannot be easily duplicated someplace else, at a lower cost?
The answer, I am convinced, is to keep an eye on the marketplace and become the world`s top producer of creativity and innovation.
Which gets us back to Mickey Mouse. What is the little rodent, anyhow, if not a creative idea spun into a $6 billion-a-year entertainment empire by innovative business types? This is the company that calls its new-product developers ”imagineers.”
For three generations, Walt Disney Co. has produced an endless stream of creative ways to drain the wallets of American parents. I once hectored mine for a fake coonskin cap. Now my 9-year-old daughter sleeps on ”Little Mermaid” sheets and can recite from memory large portions of the movie ”Lady and the Tramp.”
That`s why I`m thrilled that, beginning this weekend, millions of little Jacques and Jacquelines will drag their parents to Euro Disneyland at $225 francs ($42.45) a pop.
We also should be tickled that McDonald`s Corp. has posted its golden arches in 59 countries. Last year the Oak Brook-based fast-food innovator registered more than a third of its $20 billion in sales outside the U.S. And how about Coca-Cola Co., which has convinced so many Europeans that they need ”the real thing” that Coke churns more profit from the EC than the U.S.?
None of this is meant to suggest that America can thrive on an export diet of fast food, soft drinks and Tinkerbell. I am suggesting that these companies have a finely developed sense of what the rest of the world wants and have been very nimble at providing it.
Perhaps America`s manufacturing sector should take a lesson. Last year America`s service industries rang up a $50 billion trade surplus with the rest of the world. While our makers of cars, consumer electronics and machine tools continued to lose market share to imports, U.S.-made movies, computer software, insurance policies and business services were posting record sales overseas. It has been services-products of the mind, not the forge-that have enabled the U.S. to reduce its trade deficit from a record $146 billion in 1987 to a near-negligible $7 billion last year.
Fortunately, some U.S. manufacturers are getting the message.
Domestic makers of microchips, for instance, have regained much of the business lost to the Japanese in the early 1980s. Then the Japanese invested heavily in plants that made silicon chips capable of storing huge amounts of information. So did the Koreans, which is why that type of chip is moving toward the dreaded status of ”commodity pricing.” American makers kept a closer eye on the end-user market, recognizing that profits would be higher on smaller chips that could perform customized functions in gadgets as diverse as cellular phones and alarm systems.
But you don`t have to be an Intel or a Motorola to keep your eyes open and come up with a better idea for export.
Consider Kenneth and Susan Burnett, who 15 years ago started a small business on the North Side of Chicago making typical square tanks for tropical fish. They did a little research and discovered that their Midwest Tropical could export to Japan if they could come up with a design for smaller Japanese living spaces. Now their 5-foot-tall triangular Tower model is a big seller there. Exports are the fastest-growing part of their $5.5 million business, which employs 55 people and recently moved to larger quarters in suburban Lincolnwood.
”It takes quality and flexibility,” said Ken Burnett. ”When your export distributor makes suggestions, you don`t shake your head and say: `We don`t make them that way.` ”
To do that, as they say in France, would be goofy.
