How Time-Span Can Be Effectively Applied in a Time-Compressed World

Speaker A When you think about Elliot's work and you think about the time compression concept, elliot used the examples of the Japanese leaders in building their companies in the post World War II environment and how they had 50 year horizons. I would say that my view of that is that Elliot is still right on that people in Japan, people in China still have those horizons that our business environment and our international politics environment have changed in such a way that we're looking at short horizons. But the oriental environment still has a much longer time frame. And I would say even the Muslim environment has a much longer time frame. They're not fighting the war to win today's battle. They're not fighting the war to win tomorrow's battle. The Muslims are in a protracted conflict with the west, and they're going to devote whatever time and resources are required. I mean, if we go back to the Iran Iraq war, where the Iranians sent wave after wave of these young kids to their death against Saddam, I mean, they don't care. And the same is happening inside Iraq today. Saddar there is no understanding of winning today and everything's going to be okay tomorrow. They're in a constant battle with the west over who's going to win, and the Chinese and the Japanese have the same kind of long term horizon. And Elliot, I think, used those examples very significantly throughout his tenure. And I think that we in the west are captured by these compressed time spans in dealing with our business environment and our international politics environment and our belief that perhaps everybody is good. But there are other people that have a commitment to a higher goal, and they're not afraid to take the time and expend the human capital to get there. And they don't care what the human capital cost is.