Free market for talent

A free market in brainpower.

This could be what some countries and companies fear the most.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia recently broke ground on a 12.5 billion graduate-level university facility. He'll endow the university, built on the Red Sea shore, with $10 billion. That's more than MIT has accumulated in 142 years.

Can we imagine how many students and researchers will be attracted by this investment?

How many people from India, UAE, Pakistan... Perhaps citizens from other countries not in the region.

Companies have been fighting for talent in the workplace for some time now. Are countries like Saudi Arabia discovering the same reality?

How can countries help companies attract more talent? Is they answer education investment? Looser immigration rules? Is this even an issue of national economy anymore?

From Geoff Colvin's article in FORTUNE magazine on the global fight for talent:

What, ultimately, is a national economy? Is it good for a country if its companies prosper by offshoring high-value intellectual work? What if a nation's high-value employees are working in that nation for other nations' companies? Or if highly skilled immigrants perform high-value work and send their earnings home? The answers aren't obvious, but they are important.

How will companies deal with this new reality?