EU must tap into the creative thoughts of all the 500 million+ European citizens.

The main reason why the EU has such a worrying and a never ending upward trend of people unemployed is because EU leaders and those in Brussels do not understand that for an economic block to excel in the current world markets and those of the future, they will simply have to tap into the creative thoughts of all the 500 million+ European citizens. We have currently an obsession with the elitist thinking that only the few know best but where history shows clearly that this is a complete disaster.

All that politicians and bureaucrats think is that if a person has a first class honours degree from our most prestigious universities that they have all the answers. History has shown clearly again that this is not the case. This obsession is based upon our present political and bureaucratic masters and where they have come from this background mind set and where this is a complete fallacy. For in this respect the history of business has shown that wealth is created not through solely intelligence, but through creative thinking. Bill Gates is a prime example here who dropped out of university to set up Microsoft and now the richest person in the world again. Although I am not an admirer of Gates, it shows that suspected sheer brain power is not the answer to get us out of our economic problems. No, that lies in the hands of the masses and tapping into their creative and innovative thinking. For even Bill Gates could not come up with MS-Dos, as he had to buy it for $50,000 from an unknown computer programmer (Tim Paterson). Indeed if he had not done this I doubt that we would have ever heard of Bill Gates.

Therefore what the EU should be doing but where they will never learn, is to introduce through the EU27 the creative infrastructure to allow the creative thinking of the EU masses to be unleashed. This is totally different to the business-university model that has failed all EU nations miserably for decades now. Indeed, put this creative infrastructure model in place, costing some €2.50 billion (a small price for future economic dynamism) and we would see unemployment become a thing of the past. Will the elite of the EU do it? I very much doubt it as they are the children of this insane elitist thinking. For in this respect, ‘Elitism’ will be the economic death of us all and with it the EU itself over the next two decades. Mark my words as things are going from bad to worse by the year. China knows this and is content in knowing that our economic block is failing and our living standards are transferring to them. How mad can we really be is the biggest question that we can ask ourselves. Really mad I would say as we cannot see where our greatest strength resides.

Comment - by Dr David Hill, Chief Executive, World Innovation Foundation

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