Innovation under Populism Posted

My article “Innovation under Populism” has just been posted on the Public e-Bulletin of the ESADE Business School in Barcelona. I wrote the article several months ago, before the spread of the Covid – 19 virus. The point I made, however, is entirely relevant to the current situation. Populist governments and citizens, with their contempt for science and research, have been the slowest to react to the pandemic. Much as he tries to spin his reaction as anticipatory, there is abundant evidence that President Trump was clueless about the pandemic for all of January and February.

Given the severity of the pandemic in Spain, it is impressive that the team at ESADE was able to carry on and publish the e-bulletin on schedule. I congratulated Professor Joat Henrich Ballester, the editor, about this, and I will quote his response:

“Note for your country: the good strategy is the one used in Taiwan, Japan, Germany, … (the one we would have liked to use in Catalonia). Stay at home at an early stage, do massive tests, create an app where citizens can inform of their symptoms, act intensively where a focus appears. Here, now, the only we can do is work hard to open new hospital hi-tech beds in a few days to have nobody unattended. We have a quite strong and very qualified public-private health sector and the citizens are doing their best, so we will overcome the crisis. With much more pain and costs than necessary, but we will overcome.”

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe by email

If you are interested in my weekly blog posts about politics and political narrative, as well as updates about my research and teaching, please enter your email address below to receive a free subscription.

Subscribe

Previous Posts