We must Become a ”Tomorrow Country” says Bill Clinton

Speaking to a large crowd of sales managers and some CEOs in San Francisco last week at the Dreamforce 2010 Convention, former President Bill Clinton said “We live in a world where the way people get information is filtered through yesterday's categories." In other words, we’re making decisions about the future viewed through the lens of the past.

"We are fairly young as a country but our governmental and economic systems are fairly old," Clinton pointed out. "When you get long in the tooth, the institutions that made you great become more interested in preserving their power than doing what they should . . . being innovative."

He used as an example the fact that while the U.S. once held the lead in solar energy, we let the opportunity slip away, and the Chinese and the Germans are now the ones who will likely own it. Clinton said that unless things change, we are on a path to becoming a country in decline.

His solution? America ought to become a “tomorrow country.” We need to adapt to the future. We need to make our plans for the way the world will be five years from now, not the way it was five years ago.

This mindset has led to the extreme partisanship currently impeding our government. "I would like to break out of the left-right debate," Clinton stated. "I'd like to talk about the future."

As a new year quickly approaches, take some time to both personally and professionally think about you and your company's future.  Will you be an innovator and a person/company of tomorrow or yesterday?