Word: visione
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...pretty clear that Leonel Fernández, 53, and now midway through his second, nonconsecutive term as President of the Dominican Republic, has the vision thing. When developers proposed the country's first modern port during his first term, "he got it right away--'We can be the Singapore of the Caribbean'--his words," recalls Dominican businessman Samuel A. Conde, who is looking to set up a regional logistics center...
Perhaps even more audacious, for a country still rebounding from a colossal banking scandal, the D.R. is trying to germinate a new $800 million regional financial center. "Leonel Fernández is very much a vision man ... This is exactly the sort of visionary project he absolutely loves," says Gaetan Bucher, a Swiss-Dominican banker and the lead investor in what will essentially be an offshore entity, first trading Latin American debt and later offering a safe haven for private wealth and corporate banking...
There are many other parts to Fernández's vision of how to win a better place in a globalized world. Making the rest of the country's economy as competitive as its beaches requires enhancing current strengths as an assembly export platform (more than 500 companies operate from its free-trade zones) and retaining a bigger share of its foreign-investor-dominated tourism industry, which accounts for 12% of the country's $29.1 billion GDP. It also means diversification. The challenge is an urgent one: 80% of the country's 9 million inhabitants are under 40, and 42% live...
...going to need dependable power to fulfill Fernández's vision of deploying information technology to leapfrog the country into future-friendly industries. It could not come soon enough. China's hot dragon breath vaporized 20,000 low-skilled jobs in recent years--about 10% of the total in the free-trade zone, necessitating a move up-market. Good telecommunications could make the country suitable for outsourcing, including call centers, but the D.R. is just beginning to train the legions of computer-savvy English speakers it needs to make a dent in swelling youth unemployment. Only 10% of students finish...
...year-old Spanish priest named Josemaría Escrivá was visited by a new vision of Catholic spirituality: a movement of pious laypeople who would, by prayerful contemplation and the dedication of their labor to Christ, extend the holiness of church on Sunday into their everyday work life. Escrivá's title for the movement was a literal description--Opus Dei means "the work of God"--and his ambition was correspondingly large. He saw Opus eventually acting as "an intravenous injection [of holiness] in the bloodstream of society...