The following were the top 7 countries in global competitiveness:  USA, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland, and Japan.

Two of the world’s potentialy biggest and hottest economies, China was 34th, while India was 48th.

U.S. back on top in global competitiveness survey - Oct. 31, 2007

The United States has regained its status as the world’s most competitive economy thanks to strong innovation and excellent universities, according to a survey released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum.

This is an age old question - as akin to can leadership be taught?  Or can you teach somebody to be a great musician, or painter?  A lot depends on hard work, but a good amount also is about talent and natural affinity.

Here is a great article on this.

Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?

Goossen came to the conclusion that while there are several elements that can be taught to enhance the knowledge and success of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship is something one can learn only by doing. “With law or accounting,you can teach a set of principles that a student can master to become a competent practitioner,” he says. “But teaching entrepreneurship is tough. In a class it’s hard to predict who will do well and who will not.”

As a result of his research, Goossen has come up with three entrepreneurial elements that can be taught. The first is general business knowledge—what he calls “the nuts and bolts of management principles and strategic thinking.” Next, there are general entrepreneurial principles. “You can lean from what other people have done and where they made mistakes,” he says. Finally, he says one can learn to be alert to opportunities in certain fields in a general sense.

What can’t be taught, on the other hand, is what Goossen calls “venture specific opportunity principles.” By that he means the ability to understand and see specific niches in a market and recognize whether it will be successful or not. “You can’t teach someone how to know what will work and what won’t,” says Goossen. “You can’t even duplicate the set of dynamics of a past success.”

My wife and I have co managed some of our companies for 15 years.  We also know many friends whose companies are husband and wife teams.

It is a challenge, and the odds are bigger, but there are also areas which it will give advantage.

Why Co-founders Shouldn’t Share the CEO Title

TechStars (BusinessWeek.com, 9/26/07) founder David Cohen says he’s working with two companies that have founders sharing the CEO title, and he has concluded it’s a bad idea: “Often [it's] just a symptom of a deeper and much more important problem.”

Among his issues, which he posts on his Colorado Startups blog:

• He frowns on “the desire to make equal founders feel equally important,” arguing “they should be able to easily work as equals and assume different outward-facing titles.”