World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy.

• Author: Weiss, Barbara

Reviewed by Barbara Weiss, editor, Government Finance Review.

What it takes to make a world-class city in an age of globalized information technology, communication, and trade is the matter under discussion in this important book for anyone involved in making communities work. World Class is about how business leadership and community leadership can work together in the global community, as the information economy puts an ever-increasing premium on the quality of human and intellectual resources. It is about the declining significance of place and the ascending significance of people. These lessons in managing change are delivered by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor of business administration at Harvard who advises Fortune 500 corporations worldwide and author of a number of books on change management.

"Increasingly, the daily skirmishes of globalization are being played out not at international summit conferences or in conglomerate board rooms," says Kanter, "but in local town halls and small-business conference rooms. A new wave of social concerns and a desire for community spirit have come in the wake of economic change. Once preoccupied primarily with economic issues, the public is more and more concerned about social issues. Once focused primarily on the competitiveness of large-business corporations, leaders are more and more concerned about the strength of communities and the competitiveness of cities, states, and regions."

The author explores the nature of the new business cosmopolitans: "If the class divide of the industrial economy was between capital and labor or managers and workers, the class divide of the emerging information economy could well be between cosmopolitans and locals.... Cosmopolitans are rich in three intangible assets, three Cs that translate into preeminence and power in a global economy: concepts - the best and latest knowledge and ideas; competence - the ability to operate at the highest standards of any place anywhere; and connections - the best relationships, which provide access to the resources of other people and organizations around the world.... Some see only disadvantages, losses that concern them so deeply that they erupt into nativism and fuel class warfare between locals and cosmopolitans. But other people and organizations are already creating new forms of economic security and new kinds of civic engagement that respond to global realities and build advantages for locals."

Kanter uses three...