ABSTRACT
Happily, the prospects for all of these are good, for the Welsh economy has already gone a long way to adapt to the pressures of globalization. The evidence for this consists of a lot of inward investment and the development of flexibility in the Welsh labour market, now completely unlike its sclerotic union-dominated past. Best of all, the organizations whose job it is to encourage economic growth are geared up to meet the challenges of globalization, or even (sic) glocalisation. The narrative is sprinkled with references to the global gurus of economic development, whose names ought to be familiar to the global travellers present because they can be found in every airport bookshop (Porter, Ohmae, Handy etc.). It is as if their words of wisdom were crafted with Wales specifically in mind. The address concludes with explicit reference to two 'homegrown Cardiff University academics upon whose work the agency has been able to draw', my colleagues Philip Cooke and Kevin Morgan. Much of this is later repeated by Richard Caborn, British Minister for the Regions, in an exposition of the Blair government's policy to establish nine new regional development agencies, plus a mayor for London, and possibly some regional assemblies in England. The future economic development of Britain's regions, he assures us, will depend on encouraging the new regionalizing tendencies, which are the other side of the coin of globalization. And Wales has shown the rest of Britain, if not the world, how to do this, because here the policy issues are well understood. Wales is an 'Intelligent Region'. By way of proof, it has adopted the policies previously listed by the WDA Chairman.
