Here's The Secret To Economic Growth.

Just before his death, Peter Drucker, legendary management consultant, made an astute observation to this effect: In other countries, education is what happens before people go to work; in the United States, education is what happens after people start to work.

Now, an Indian-born expert on technology in the workplace is making the same point. Amar Bhide, a professor at Columbia University, says that America's great strength as an economic power in the world lies in the day-to-day innovativeness of its huge work force. Bhide says that this advantage doesn't lie so much in the creation of new technologies, but in the increasingly productive use of existing technologies, especially in the services sector. "WalMart and its followers are as much a part of the technological success of American as Silicon Valley," he observes.

The term that Professor Bhide uses to describe this advantage is "mid-level innovation," which means that it is buried in the infinite number of small productive improvements made in day-to-day work in U.S. companies.

In his book, The Venturesome Economy, Bhide says that the greatest payoff for education spending in America would be at the level of community colleges, where millions of people are learning practical skills and especially how to use information technology in actual work situations.

As long as we continue to utilize technology to improve how we do our daily jobs, the economy will invariably grow--regardless of where the new technologies come from.