Former NFL player’s book says inclusive competitiveness is key to future U.S. economic prosperity

Some may only know Johnathan Holifield as a former Cincinnati Bengals running back, but since his stint in the NFL, he’s been anything but idle. Now senior vice president for new economies at Bitwise Industries, Holifield has gained important insight into America’s economic engine and why, he says, the country can’t win without strengthening at once inclusion and competitiveness.

His book, The Future Economy and Inclusive Competitiveness: How Demographic Trends and Innovation Can Create Economic Prosperity for All Americans, provides a way for America to advance in the global economic competitiveness battle. The solution Holifield suggests is inclusive competitiveness: a framework designed to connect underestimated populations to the best opportunities in the U.S. economy, improving their performance and boosting national productivity.

Holifield’s vision of the future economy is achieving more with the goal of getting “all hands on deck.” According to his model, this will happen only by including disconnected Americans, such as women, African Americans, Latinos and rural populations, in America’s economic competitiveness priorities and no longer relegating their aspirations to less productive areas of the economy.

The book “offers a clear critique of how we got to such low productivity of underserved humans in the Innovation Economy,” Holifield said. “… and an even clearer, implementable path to achieving genuine economic inclusion and competitiveness.”

The Future Economy and Inclusive Competitiveness is an important read for anyone who is passionate about community transformation, generational wealth creation and U.S. competitiveness, and interested in a proven framework to make them happen.

Holifield’s unique background effectively carrying out inclusive competitiveness in the government and private sectors and more, has given him equally unique and actionable ideas. In regard to his early mover position, he says he “may be the first person to explicitly link improved U.S. global competitiveness to diversity, equity and inclusion.”