I like to believe that I was at the starting point of software product offshoring to India way back in early 90s when we setup the AT&T Bell Lab’s R&D operations in India. Now most technology companies have large R&D centers in India. While there has been a lot of headcount growth, I feel that the maturity hasn’t grown as much as should have. This series of 7 articles, written over a period of three months, tackles some of the issues that need more attention. Check them out if you have missed any.
Archive for March, 2007
First Series Roundup on India R&D Centers
Published by March 30th, 2007 in offshoring, software industry and roundups. 1 CommentDon’t Fall For the “Get Big Fast” Strategy
Published by March 29th, 2007 in investing and entrepreneurship. 2 CommentsThis S+B article studies the dot-com failure rates and concludes that there was too little, not too much entry. The real problem was that there wasn’t sufficiently diverse range of exploratory investments. A herd based investing paradigm was in place. Had there been more diversity maybe more businesses would have failed, but these failures would have been smaller and would have provided less costly lessons.
5 Sacred Cows of Product Offshoring
Published by March 28th, 2007 in offshoring and software industry. 1 CommentSacred cows are ideas that are exempt from criticism or questioning. Here are 5 common sacred cows that get in the way of product offshoring…
Bill Campbell Talks About Empowered Engineers
Published by March 27th, 2007 in organizational design. 3 CommentsBill Campbell, Chairman of Intuit, is interviewed in McKinsey Quarterly. He talks of the primacy of engineers in a product company, the role of product managers and range of topics…
Managing the Tension between Product Offshoring and Incubation
Published by March 25th, 2007 in offshoring and software industry. 1 CommentThere is strong business case for India-based product offshoring and product incubation. Doing both surfaces the inherent tension between them. Good performance with one of them doesn’t automatically result in good performance with the other. If anything, the odds are that doing one of them will weaken the other. So what’s the way out?
Indian SMB Sector Ripe for New Breed of IT Solutions
Published by March 23rd, 2007 in software industry, bottom-of-the-pyramid and SaaS. 0 CommentsAMI’s study further validates that Indian SMB sector is ripe for targeted SaaS solutions…
Imagine If Quantum Mechanics Ceases To Be So Esoteric?
Published by March 22nd, 2007 in uncategorized. 3 CommentsTerence Tao has offered a fascinating analogy of quantum mechanics using computer games. He is able to explain many aspects of quantum mechanics like “many-world” existence of reality, the dual particle and wave existence, the quantization phenomenon, Bell inequality violation, and more. This raises the question: What if QM ceases to be so esoteric? Might it not then have a social impact much like Copernicus’ heliocentric theory and theory of evolution?
Entrepreneurship Education Takes Root in India
Published by March 21st, 2007 in innovation and entrepreneurship. 0 CommentsSramana writes that India is poised to see an entrepreneurship boom in the next 10 years. She is right! Entrepreneurship is going global. VCs are partly responsible. Also playing a role is the spread of entrepreneurship education. High quality entrepreneurship education centers have sprouted in all the major cities…
It’s the Season of Merger Speculations
Published by March 20th, 2007 in investing and software industry. 3 CommentsMany merger ideas are doing the rounds. Take your pick: Google buys Intuit, Microsoft acquires Yahoo, Apple swallows Adobe. Ironically, all this is at a time when there is talk about a PE buyout of Symantec. It’s so easy to forget that big mergers often don’t work out in the long run!
India R&D Footprint: Time to Evaluate and Fix the Portfolio
Published by March 19th, 2007 in offshoring and software industry. 0 CommentsTwo basic questions that underpin long-term success in moving product development to India have been ignored. These questions are: (a) Which sub-products or components to move? (b) How to move them? In place of careful consideration, the focus has been on momentum. The result is that the India R&D footprint of every MNC has uneven quality. What’s more there are significant variations across MNC captives. These variations didn’t matter when the times were good and growth was easy to come by. But now times are changing… it’s time to evaluate the portfolio. This is how it can be done…
A Practical Framework for Successful Product Offshoring
Published by March 16th, 2007 in offshoring and software industry. 5 CommentsThe product offshoring failures don’t get discussed publicly and the same mistakes are made again and again. This article discusses a practical framework for success.
Real leadership is about discouraging sucking up. This takes self-awareness and character.
IEEE: High-Tech Professionals Are Struggling With Meetings/Email
Published by March 14th, 2007 1 CommentIEEE study reveals that high-tech professionals spent on an average half a day in meetings and doing email. Another quarter goes in information gathering, usually, using the Internet. That leaves only a quarter of the day for generating some kind of knowledge artifacts. Other data shows that meetings in India are shorter, involve fewer people and are less plagued by multi-tasking.
Criticizing Management Theory and Education
Published by March 12th, 2007 in uncategorized. 5 CommentsManagement theory and education is too focused on formulas. I don’t think success in business comes from a formula. It comes from making good choices using powers of critical thinking. It comes from execution based on hustle and energy.
I crossed the 100 day milestone in mid-February. Many of you responded to the feedback poll suggesting that I stay the course. Thanks for your encouragement. Please keep the comments flowing. A warm welcome to all the new visitors as well. There was a 32% increase in average daily visitors during the month. Here are the most popular posts of February. Check them out if you missed any…
The New Business Case for Gender Diversity
Published by March 9th, 2007 in organizational design and leadership. 7 CommentsThe business case for diversity was initially about talent shortage. Then it was defined in market-based terms. It was about understanding diverse and multicultural customers. Now the business case is about giving the firm the capability to have an adaptive strategy posture so that it can succeed in times of increasing uncertainty. This argument calls for gender diversity not just in the workforce but also in the top management teams. Making that happen is not easy.
Higher Education in India Needs an Orbit Change
Published by March 7th, 2007 in civic issues. 0 CommentsIndian economy is growing at 9% and will double in 8 years. So it will need about twice as many professionals as now. Where will they come from? The talent crunch is acute and real. Major reform in higher education is needed. Is it underway?
Should We Start an Intrapreneurship SIG in Bangalore?
Published by March 6th, 2007 in entrepreneurship. 6 CommentsIntrapreneurship is particularly challenging when it has to be done from a remote development center in India. This has led to a debate among some of us on how best to promote intrapreneurship in India. Should we form a Special Interest Group (SIG) to do this? Or is this best left for each company to figure out themselves?
My linkroll now has 167 posts culled from thousands of blogposts that I have read recently.
A Different Startup Mantra
Published by March 3rd, 2007 in investing, entrepreneurship and organizational design. 3 CommentsThere are two startup worlds out there. One is about comparative selling and the other one is about displacement selling. One is about leveraging disruptive technology and the other is about leveraging exogenous effects. One is about mastery over disintermediation, commoditization, or offshoring to reduce time-to-market; the other is about using it help the customer do legacy stuff for less. These subtle but significant differences in the startup mantra have big implications for entrepreneurs and VCs.
Microsoft in Russia and Netherland’s Eighty Years’ War
Published by March 2nd, 2007 in software industry and inter-cultural issues. 0 CommentsThis argues that the controversial Windows XP piracy case against the Russian school Principal is a big cultural error of judgment on part of Microsoft.
