The reverses to the City are small in the context of the difficulties it has faced over the past century: after each of the two world wars its business was destroyed, and during the 1970s it was savaged by political and industrial strife in Britain as well as the greatest outbreak of global inflation the world has ever known.
As for Ireland, the clinching argument was put to me by one of its most senior bankers at a Trinity College Dublin meeting. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We will go down 10 per cent, maybe a bit more, and that is dreadful. But in the previous fifteen or so years, we added 100 per cent to our GDP. And we will recover.’
One of the first examples I chose, though, was Scottish-and in particular what is by far the world’s largest collection of arts events, the Edinburgh Festival. Indeed its combination of a sense of collective mission over several generations and its status as a supreme marketplace for talent actually helped define the nature of the book. Is it particularly Scottish? Well, yes, in the sense that it could not happen without the support of Edinburgh’s citizens, who belie their reputation for being strait-laced in the way they relish the edgy stuff that is set out before them. But no in the sense that I am not trying to illustrate or praise national characteristics as such-simply to show what others can learn from undoubted success stories.
For continental Europe, the choices were harder. There are only four examples in this book and I wish I had more. A couple are stories I have wanted to tell for a long time. I have been an admirer of the German Mittelstand, the country’s collection of medium-sized companies, since my childhood, for reasons I explain in the text. And ever since I first went there, I have wanted to tell the story of how Copenhagen’s taming of the motor car has come to offer a lesson to the world. The other two were harder choices.
The only commercial company in the book is Sweden’s Ikea, chosen not because I am handy bolting together its flatpacked furniture or because it is particularly customer-friendly; quite the reverse-it is one of those companies that people love to hate. No, it was because its success goes beyond commerce in that it illustrates the sense of mission very well and also has something essentially Scandinavian about its ethos-a mix of style and equality-that was worth trying to bring to a wider audience.
The fourth European example is the drug-rehabilitation programme introduced in Zurich, and more specifically the rehabilitation of heroin users. I have to acknowledge that this scheme is not perfect; it just seems to have been more effective than any other. This study came about because Frances Cairncross, my spouse, visited its clinics when writing about drugs for The Economist magazine, and while the scheme has been imitated elsewhere and there have been some success stories, these have not been as numerous as I would have hoped. I think that is mostly because politics have got in the way, so if telling this tale helps push politics aside then it will have been a worthwhile exercise.
I am just as concerned, though, about the other stories that I would love to have included but have not. One huge success has been Finland’s primary and secondary education. According to an OECD study, the performance of Finnish students is quite outstanding. Would the Finnish ideas travel? Well, among the former Eastern bloc countries, Estonia has the best education outcomes. Why so? Officials there explained to me that they had adopted the Finnish model. Estonia is culturally very close to Finland so it is hard to gauge the potential reach of the ideas, but evidently they do have a bit of mileage in them.
There is nothing from France or Italy and, of course, there should be, for each has areas of outstanding excellence. The problem with France was finding examples capable of being replicated elsewhere. For example, the country leads the world in the proportion of its electricity generated by nuclear power stations. Those plants are reliable, efficient and, as far as one can judge, cost-effective. But it would not be easy to transplant a policy and a technology. In any case, a new plant in Finland, being built by a French company, has run into serious difficulties and is behind schedule and over budget.
Another example would be French healthcare, one of my original choices. It is still on balance one of the best systems in the world, if an expensive one, but it failed in the heatwave of August 2003. France had up to 20,000 more deaths than normal as a result of the soaring temperatures. Why? One reason seems to have been that August is the month-long holiday season there and most French doctors and other medical staff were off-duty.
One obvious Italian quality is its design talent, but that is hard to transfer to other countries. An example of excellence that has been imitated elsewhere is Italy’s ‘slow food’ movement-the emphasis on quality rather than quantity in food-which is a philosophy that encompasses other aspects of the Italian way. It would have been good to have included that as a means of examining how the country has managed to sustain one of the most-admired quality-of-life environments anywhere in the world. However, while other parts of the world have tried to copy some of these qualities, I felt the movement is so rooted in the history and culture of Italy that the lessons are limited.
One other European gap is Russia, where a candidate was the country’s technical education. This was clearly exceptional, though maybe less so now than a decade or more ago. Another potential case study was the vibrancy of Russian writing, also exceptional. But it was hard to bolt down excellence that could be transferred and so sadly the gap remains.
In North America the choices were extremely tough. I know and like America and have sought to understand it over many years, but choosing key messages for the world was difficult. An obvious area of excellence is in the business community and one of the original examples was General Electric, though I was more interested in it as a school for executives who then worked in other companies, rather than as a business itself. But this is a very well-travelled route and I was not sure I could add much value. I wanted to write about excellence in US healthcare, which at its best delivers a wonderful service. There have been many social initiatives, for example Milwaukee’s welfare reforms, which deserve a wider audience. I spent many hours researching, discussing and rejecting.
In the end I went back to a place that I knew and loved. Small towns in America have long fascinated me and having family in Montana has given me what I hope is a special insight into one medium-sized and successful town there, Billings.
Philanthropic New York was another choice, brought about by my affection for the city ever since my first visit in 1964, but also by a growing respect for the generosity of American people. The third US example, Harvard, was originally included not so much as a university but as a fund-management group. That was a bit too quirky and I had gone back to thinking about Harvard’s basic message of educational excellence even before the financial meltdown of late 2007 rather destroyed any idea about its special insights into fund management. My perspective has been one of a rival as my spouse is head of one of the oldest of the colleges at Oxford University, which has encouraged me to think a lot about what makes universities truly and lastingly great.
And then there is Whistler. There are many things about Canada to be admired but authors are allowed to be a bit self-indulgent: as a keen if not particularly skilled skier, and a correspondent on the sport, I did not see why I should not write about a ski-resort if I wanted to. More important, there is something especially and wonderfully Canadian about this tale, which I hope I have brought out.
The USA and Canada are covered but Latin America, I am afraid, is not. The only excuse, aside from the obvious one of a lack of space, is that I am not as familiar with the region as I am with most other parts of the world. I did, however, want very much to include a Brazilian tale and looked at several possibilities, an obvious one being the successful