Globalization & Common Sense (Right Sense!)

Steve Hamm writes,

We’d all be better off if the Congress would forget about the phony crisis of immigration and concentrate on doing things that improve the health, education, and job opportunities for America’s less fortunate masses. That would be a worthy cause for Dobbs to get behind, too.

I just can’t avoid referring to John Hagel's insightful and thought-provoking article on this topic. Few days back, I read his brilliant rejoinder titled, “blindness to globalization” that he published on the perspectives shared by economist Alan Blinder in the Wall Street Journal. Amongst other things, Blinder claimed that the US can potentially lose some 40 million jobs to outsourcing in the next few years.
Hagel's builds the rejoinder on multiple fronts: He thinks that these projections are faulty in that they are much too static in their view of potential job movements.

They rely on the infamous ceteris paribus qualification – i.e., all other things being equal. Of course, other things are never equal and the dynamics in competitive strategies and talent development initiatives could shift the actual movement of jobs significantly in one direction or another. He argues quite brilliantly that, it's a mistake to assume jobs are zero-sum: outsourcing can actually create jobs as well as move them.

The offshoring trend needs to be understood within this broader context. We are moving from a world where demand can be forecast and resources "pushed" to the right place at the right time to a world where we need to flexibly "pull" resources wherever they reside when they are needed.

Traditional educational institutions represent classic examples of push programs. We project far in advance what students should learn and then develop curricula and programs to push that knowledge at the appropriate time. Just like the push programs in business, that model is now coming apart at the seams.

The answer is right within these statements – education and mindset change is the key to prosperity – in this globalizing world, this is true for both developed economies & developing economies!! Some solutions are universal & absolute in nature!!

Labels: Application Outsourcing, Globalization, Offshoring