Monday, April 27, 2009

vivek wadhwa: Is Indian IT fueling a new wave of growth in advanced research and product development processes?

apr 26th, 2009

i guess someone has to cheerlead. wadhwa is doing what the late dewang mehta used to do as head of nasscom: see my old column "the man who knew marketing". i don't have anywhere near such a high opinion of indian IT, which is not very innovative. it mostly does stuff on demand, and one of the concerns is that it never even tells the customers if what they are asking for is dumb, impossible or counterproductive, it just does what the customer asks for. 

in fact, other parts of the indian economy may be far more innovative. eg. medical services, we have talked about aravind eye clinic, narayana hrudayalaya etc, clearly very clever. also, see this article on rural, grassroots innovation. http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/radjou/2009/04/indias-rural-innovations.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-LISTSERV-_-APR_2009-_-TECHNOLOGY 

 and in fact, there is a whole book on indian innovation that may be instructive. it is published by the world bank: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/0,,contentMDK:21490203~pagePK:146736~piPK:146830~theSitePK:223547,00.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ram Narayanan

http://american.com/archive/2009/april-2009/the-indian-exception-proving-the-rule  

THE AMERICAN: The Journal of the American Enterprise Institute 

The Indian Exception Proving the Rule 

By Vivek Wadhwa Thursday, April 23, 2009


The Satyam scandal rocked the global business community and threatened to
stifle the Indian outsourcing industry. But as the dust settles, the forces driving
outsourcing are as strong as ever, with benefits for both India and the West.

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The forces pushing the growth of IT outsourcing and fueling the rise of Satyam, along with companies like Wipro and Infosys, did not disappear because Ramalinga shoved $1 billion down a rabbit hole. Rather, the very same forces are actually gathering steam. And these forces will fuel a new wave of outsourcing from U.S. companies that goes beyond India's legacy plain vanilla data and IT administration business and into more advanced research and product development processes. Companies such as Tata ConsultancyServices and HCL Technologies are helping develop next-generation networking services, medical equipment, avionics systems, and the interiors of luxury jets for Western companies. Both HCL and Tata got their start running drab, back office data processes for foreign firms. Now they are being trusted with the crown jewels.

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