Fouroboros | Jack Trout thinks outsourcing needs "better spin."

11-12-2004 UPDATE: More Links to outsourcing-related posts at bottom

10-28-2003

From: The Enterprise System Spectator

Companies mum on savings from IT offshore outsourcing Here's more on the impact of IT outsourcing. Computerworld observes that many large public companies, such as Microsoft, AT&T, and IBM, who are usually quick to trumpet their cost-cutting initiatives, are slow to publicize how much they are saving by moving IT jobs offshore, fearing an anti-outsourcing backlash. Furthermore, major Indian outsourcing firms such as Infosys, Wipro, and Satyam have stopped announcing new customers.

"The problem is that companies aren't sure if it's politically correct to talk about it," said Jack Trout, a principal at marketing and strategy firm Trout & Partners. "Nobody has come up with a way to spin it in a positive way."

The article predicts that as many as 2 million U.S. white-collar jobs such as programmers, software engineers and applications designers will move offshore by 2014.

"Nobody has come up with a way to spin it in a positive way."

Geezus. You don't need spin. Just a firm grip on reality, well explained. And a public reminder that we've travelled and survived this road before. Followed by a coherent, bracing and embracing answer to the question: "What's next?" Lookee here....

Now, what that looks like in practice....

(OECD Excel)

Now look at what we and everyone else has gone through since Seventeen-hundred and frozen-to-death...

50 years... and equilibrium sets in, if Goldman Sachs and OECD are correct. And even if their numbers are off a bit, history doesn't lie.

Where is Gerstner on this? Bush? Or Commerce Secretary Don Evans. Or Dean or Kerry or Clark? This is the top line of their job descriptions, all of them. Absent political cojones or understanding, it's a prime opportunity for business to step up and show some national leadership.

In this case, to clearly explain that global growth and accelerated second and third world manufacturing puberty comes with, guess what? Growing pains. For everybody.

Act Two of that explanation is to demonstrate why the sooner developing countries grow mature industries and middle classes, the more incentives there will be not to rely on "cost" but "differentiation"--and it's commensurate higher margins--as their competitive advantage. (But first, WE have to shake that lazy habit ourselves. And quick.)

Finally, Act Three: if the near term course (30-50 years) is to follow Adam Smith's hand to inevitable Global Economic maturity and stability, what's the plan on what we do for eats and advantage in the interim, and then, beyond?

Once upon a time, another President named Bush said "we have more will than wallet."

He was wrong. A uniform paradox of business (and politics, and entertainment, and...) is that imagination and layered, sustainable solutions take sweat and spadework, perspective and patience, and more than just a little curiosity. Each of these are increasingly institutionally suspect and subservient to "speed."

Writing a check is easy, and it feels like "action." Cut and paste ideas, Excel Spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations pass for expansive thinking. Going back to the moon doesn't cut it. We've seen that movie. In short, there is far too much money chasing far too few ideas. There is a dearth of new frontiers in American Business and Politics, and that lack has Americans Jonesing. And biting their fingernails. And swinging fists. Big time.

More to come later this evening.

America and Outsourcing: Eagle? Cuckoo? Ostrich?

If Pride matters more than Money, why does Outsourcing trump Thinking?

Outsourcing: Corporate Anorexia in a Land of Plenty?

Is The Jobless Recovery Due to Small Business Outsourcing?

C-Level executives and industry are in danger of losing some vital artillery

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Courage in Business

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