Why Reading Matters for Mexico’s Economic Future

Mexico has an ambitious goal of becoming one of the 10 largest economies on the planet. Yes, we all want to get there. The fundamental question is, as always, how?

A top-down approach is certainly crucial, and it is often what leaders, analysts, and academics focus on: strategic plans to attract investment, develop infrastructure, and generally shift the economic gears. This is all crucial, of course; however, these well-intentioned plans can go a lot further if met with a bottom-up approach too. In other words, what can each individual do to contribute to the economic awakening of Mexico?

There is one small and significant action that can occur daily, which is normally overlooked as a tool helpful for business: reading. But why should it matter if people read when a country is in the pursuit of economic development?

Reading can shape better leaders, who can then turn a business into resilient, disruptive, and transformative enterprises. Reading can motivate entrepreneurs, who then turn an idea into a solution for real, pressing problems. And with stronger companies and innovative solutions, we can aspire to achieve a thriving economy.

But let us take a step back to try and grasp the virtues of reading and why they can make an individual become a successful businessperson or entrepreneur – without even entering into the field of cognitive studies and neuroscience (to which there is a lot to read about too).

To start with, and if you have made it thus far, it proves that reading teaches curiosity — the curiosity to read past the first few paragraphs of an article to encounter a thesis that you may or may not agree with, but that has already (hopefully) made you think. Mere curiosity to read one more line can teach you a new idea and, if done so repeatedly, it will inevitably lead you to expanding the frontiers of your own knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom that will become a powerful toolkit for you to make sound business decisions.

The act of repetition is inherently relevant to reading because this is a habit of perseverance, a common characteristic in the business world: “The most entrepreneurial trait there is: the ability to persist.” — Steve Chou. Learning perseverance through reading is only half of the wonder because doing something every day adds up. It amasses. It compounds — because Warren Buffet does not only compound interest through investments, he compounds knowledge through reading — and one feeds the other.

One more virtue worth mentioning is that reading fuels and triggers conversations. It is a genuine, interesting, and organic source of content to start an interaction with somebody, which is in its essence a core aspect of business: talking to people. Two business leaders who read will delve into deeper, more meaningful, memorable, and insightful conversations than two who cannot move past the shallowness of trivial small talk. So, maybe, your next cold call will turn into a hot lead thanks to something you read that morning. Or perhaps the next time you are pitching an idea you will connect with a potential investor because you both share the same favorite author.

Admired leaders must also be thought-provoking. Guiding an enterprise through the complexity of our times requires people who are themselves complex. Reading can add an edge to anybody, helping develop a cult of personality that can motivate a team to pursue an objective or a whole organization to align and strive for a vision. Because being a business leader means a lot more than making money. Yes, profitability is the cornerstone of business. But being a business leader implies also having the qualities to understand change, mistakes, trends, and people — it helps us see what others cannot see when they have the exact same evidence in front of them. “Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.” — Jim Rohn.

And nothing refines business acumen and human perspicacity more than the actual exercise of training one's brain through the simple act of reading: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Joseph Addison. Moreover, reading is a hack to knowledge: it allows you to build on the base of what already exists, without having to reinvent the wheel.

Lacking these skills and strengths sets businesspeople up for failure. In the era of AI, it is very easy to make this point. Who else will be able to identify what is true or false from a badly prompted Chat GPT query but the person who can compare that specific output to a larger dataset of knowledge stored in their brain and acquired through the act of reading?

Now, of course, before sounding like an AI-skeptic or Neo-Luddite, it is crucial to highlight that any tool and technical advancement that encourages fair and legal access to content is worth its weight in gold. This said, AI should be used to maximize our reading capacity and potential, not to replace it.

So, what does reading mean for our country? Mexico has a strong entrepreneurial DNA and the potential to achieve its ambitious economic goals; yet, we are neglecting a low-hanging fruit: reading. Events like FIL Guadalajara and the Business Book Fair are valuable platforms to foster a culture of reading, but we need to go much further in that direction. Today, according to publicly available data, Mexico’s reading average lags behind most of the world’s largest economies (World Population Review*). If we aspire to be among the Top 10 economies, then we must start reading like one. Let us all read for our country.

* https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-books-read-per-year-by-country