Hybridity is Your Competitive Advantage

In this Forbes article, Dan Porterfield, President of the Aspen Institute, speaks with Eric Liu (Executive Director of the Citizen and American Identity Program) about the multiple narratives that define American identity. Eric explains that his team is reimagining what it means to be American by engaging in big picture questions.

In his studies of American culture, Liu’s team realized that America is not a melting pot. It is all about hybridity. He says, “It is nothing but crazy, unforeseen hybridity that the rest of the planet could not have contemplated. We intuit this in the basic ways of our daily living. As Americans, we do not blink at the idea of a food cart selling a kimchi burrito. However, in both Korea and other parts of the world, that kind of hybridity is foreign. For Americans, it is not only natural, but also our competitive advantage.”

The best quote is towards the end of the article: “It inspired the belief that, as Americans, we can recognize the hybridity that is already in us. It’s not a new thing. It has always been there....embrace the hybrid. To see that it is our competitive advantage.”