Up the food chain we go...

BusinessWeek

Outsourcing Innovation
Big-name companies such as Dell, Motorola, and Philips are farming out their R&D to giant but little-known Asian developers. It's fast, efficient, and yes, it's cheaper. But the economic implications are enormous. Are these companies going too far?

....HTC? Flextronics? Cellon? There's a good reason these are hardly household names. The multimedia devices produced from their prototypes will end up on retail shelves under the brands of companies that don't want you to know who designs their products. Yet these and other little-known companies, with names such as Quanta Computer, Premier Imaging, Wipro Technologies (WIT ), and Compal Electronics, are fast emerging as hidden powers of the technology industry.

They are the vanguard of the next step in outsourcing -- of innovation itself. When Western corporations began selling their factories and farming out manufacturing in the '80s and '90s to boost efficiency and focus their energies, most insisted all the important research and development would remain in-house. But that pledge is now passé...

A dog growls at a passerby. The passerby turns to approach the dog. The dog bares its teeth. The passerby moves closer. The dog growls some more. The passerby thinks better of it and moves on. And the dog returns to chewing off its tail.

Wait, I like this story better.

A FISHERMAN skilled in music took his flute and his nets to the
seashore. Standing on a projecting rock, he played several tunes
in the hope that the fish, attracted by his melody, would of
their own accord dance into his net, which he had placed below.
At last, having long waited in vain, he laid aside his flute, and
casting his net into the sea, made an excellent haul of fish.
When he saw them leaping about in the net upon the rock he said:
"O you most perverse creatures, when I piped you would not dance,
but now that I have ceased you do so merrily."

Yeah, that's it.