"Clean your plate. Children in China and India are starving." That's what American parents a generation ago told their children. Today, parents should be telling their children to "Do your homework. Children in China and India are starving for your job." Those quotations from the book "The World is Flat," by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, were just part of an introduction to the global economy presented Wednesday to a group of more than 30 students representing all four high schools in Madison County.

Sponsored by the Madison County Business-Education Partnership, the students sat in on a video conference with Dr. Ana Guzman, a business professor at ITESO University in Guadalajara, Mexico, and visited the Kentucky World Trade Center office in Lexington. At the trade center office, the students heard from its director, former Kentucky Gov. Martha Layne Collins, who presided over negotiations that brought Toyota Motor Manufacturing to Scott County. According to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the average manufacturing wage in the United States is $19.10 an hour. In China, it's 70 cents an hour. "Who do you think is doing the low-paid, labor-intensive work, and who do you thinks is working the better-paid, capital intensive work?" asked Josh Crutcher from the marketing office of Lectrodryer Richmond. "In today's global economy, the higher paid people are those who do can do high-skilled or knowledge-based jobs," said Blanca Ramirez, marketing director for Lectrodryer. "In the future, more jobs will be knowledge based." She also encouraged the students to think critically and verify what is presented to them. "Don't accept as fact what representatives of government and industry tell you," said Ramirez, a native of Mexico.

The knowledge that well-paid people will need in the future will include proficiency in a second language and acquaintance with other cultures, said John McPhearson, managing partner of Lectrodryer, which provided most of the funding for the field trip. "International business is done in the language of the buyer," he said. The knowledge of what is customary in the customer's culture also can be crucial when attempting to do business with people from another country," he said. Literature, from sales brochures to operator manuals, also have to be translated correctly, she said. The packet of information about the company given to the students included a sales brochure in another language as well as English. Knowledge of at least one other culture and language "will give you better employment prospects," Ramirez added, referring to an employment Web site that currently lists 600 jobs with bi-lingual requirements."

McPhearson met Ramirez while on a sales trip to Guadalajara, where she worked for the Kentucky Trade Office. She is fluent in English and French as well as her native Spanish, and she is working to learn Chinese. Her knowledge of three languages, in addition to her international marketing expertise, led Lectrodryer to offer her employment, McPhearson said. Since joining Lectrodryer less than three years ago, Ramirez has helped market the Kentucky manufacturer's products on six continents. Some 58 percent of Lectrodryer's products are sold abroad. "We have customers in 30 countries," she said. "Lectrodryer designs and manufactures equipment that dries and/or purifies gases and liquids," McPhearson said. "We do all of our designing, engineering and manufacturing, as well as our sales and marketing from our facility in Richmond." The company, which is the largest of its type in the western hemisphere, had sales of nearly $5.4 million in 2005. It occupies a 15,200-square-foot facility in the Richmond Industrial Park. "We have standard designs, but we also do custom designs that give us a marketing edge," McPhearson said.

Lectrodryer has a group of seven engineers, mechanical and electrical, as well as workers with technical skills such as welding. "We've hired graduates of Eastern Kentucky University and Madison Central High School who have done quite well for us," McPhearson said. Lectrodryer also has hired two graduates from universities in Guadalajara "who came to us very well prepared and were used to working hard," he added. As a regional University in Mexico with 45,000 students, ITESO University has a mission similar to EKU's, McPhearson said. The students assembled in the video conference room of the Lexington law firm of Stoll, Keenon and Ogden to hear Guzman's address. "Innovation is the key to being competitive" in what is increasingly a "knowledge-based economy," she said. Guzman defined innovation is "an invention that has a market."

Manufacturers are looking for people who can help create new products, services and applications as well as manufacturing efficiencies. "Innovation furnishes opportunities to create wealth that results in higher standards of living," she said. At least three-fourths of the jobs being created today are knowledge-based, Guzman added. "Innovation is seldom the product of a single individual," the Mexican professor said in very clear English. "It is usually facilitated through a network," another reason why communication skills are so important in the international business world. In another age, minerals such as petroleum, coal or iron ore were considered an economy's most valuable resources. Today, and in the future, "Time and attention will be the most valuable resources," she said.

Economic development is not the only challenge facing the modern world, Guzman continued. The unequal distribution of wealth can lead to social and political tensions that can threaten everyone's prosperity, she said. Innovative thinking will be required to solve these problems as well, she said. "Huge social change is under way in Madison County," McPhearson told the students. "I hope you will embrace it and be part of it." Following up on Guzman's talk about innovation, McPhearson recommended that everyone read the book "Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win."

After a lunch at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, the students met with Collins, who also is a former school teacher. In addition to being chief executive of the trade center, she also is an "executive-in-residence" at Georgetown College. She echoed the earlier advice that Ramirez earlier gave the students, "Language gives you power." "If you're negotiating with someone and have to rely on a translator, the other person has an advantage," Collins said. "They've probably already understood what you said in English, but while you're waiting for a translation, they have more time to think and plan their next negotiating move." Despite differences of language and culture, Collins reminded the students about everyone's common humanity. "Even though they may not look like us, dress like us or speak like us, we're all very much the same," she said. "I'm just a little girl from Bagdad, Ky.," said Collins, whose term as governor ended two years before most of the students listening to her were born.

When Collins graduated from college with a degree in home economics, educated young women could find jobs as teachers, nurses, librarians and secretaries, and not much else, she said. "The only restrictions on you today are those you place on yourself," she told the young women. Crutcher noted that only eight members of the 33-student delegation were boys. After teaching school, Collins entered politics and was elected clerk of the state supreme court, lieutenant governor and then governor. She negotiated business deals with heads of multinational corporations and had lunch with the queen of England, Collins told the students. "You're already leaders or you wouldn't have been chosen to come here today," she said. "I expect you to be the leaders that Kentucky will need in the future."

The Madison County Business Education Partnership is sponsored by the Richmond Chamber of Commerce and the Madison County School District. Madison County schools provide bus transporation for the field trip.