sustained in the future, reaching a pessimistic conclusion with
respect to highly industrialized nations but identifying eastern
Europe and Asia, with their vast populations and emerging but
still unsteady economic growth, as a crucial source of potential
future growth.

In sustaining economic growth during the next century, busi-
ness enterprises and governments will play vital roles. The United
States has led the world in developing venture capital provision
organizations that have fueled multiple technological revolutions.
Canada and the United Kingdom are cultivating similar institu-
tions, but continental European nations still have much to learn and
accomplish in that domain. Because individual enterprises find it
hard to appropriate the benefits from fundamental scientific
advances, industry is unlikely on its own to provide sufficient
financial support for much-needed basic scientific research. Gov-
ernments will have to fill the gap. In the industrialized nations,
maintaining and enhancing the quality of educational institutions,
from the preschool stage through university, will be crucial to
renewing and revitalizing scientific and engineering work forces.
To maintain incentives inducing able students to specialize in
scientific and engineering disciplines, business firms may have to
reconsider the structure of their compensation systems. Even so,
for nations such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, immigration policies that are particularly open to highly
qualified scientists and engineers can be an important complement
to domestic educational policies. And if the potential for eco-
nomic growth benefiting the much larger number of individuals
living in less prosperous nations is to be realized, the leading
industrialized nations must provide both encouragement and
cooperation.

The British-North American Committee believes that these
issues merit further study and development by both business enter-

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