Happy Diwali from BCM Digital and Steve Carell.



We’re about a year, 500 attack ads, millions of dollars, and dozens of celebrity voicemails away from next year’s election. Yet, it feels like the right time to begin covering each candidate’s position on ‘outsourcing’ (r.i.p.).

It’s only appropriate to start with the current frontrunner.

Recently, Hillary’s stance adapts like time. IST, she’s pro; EST, totally against. PST, and we’re back to pro again.

Roll some context: the 90s The Clintons have a long history of support for free trade. NAFTA and increases to the H1B program are probably the strongest examples.

“Clinton’s positioning on outsourcing dates to the 1990s, when her husband’s administration aggressively pursued free trade agreements such as NAFTA that union workers today consider the start of a huge exodus of U.S. jobs to cheaper overseas competition.

During the rise of the Internet, the Clinton administration also distributed temporary-worker visas to hundreds of thousands of Indians who came to the United States for jobs at high-tech companies.”

source 1999 Clinton realizes a new-found love of the Indian community to begin the millenium:

“As Clinton pursued a Senate seat in 1999, the Indian American community stepped up its giving. Indian businessman Sant Singh Chatwal raised $500,000 for her in his Upper East Side penthouse, including $210,000 from 14 entities connected to him.”

Chatwal and the Indian community have continued to support Clinton’s presidential run:

“Chatwal is now a finance co-chairman for Clinton’s presidential campaign, and Clinton aides said they have counted more than $2 million in contributions raised at Indian American events.”

source 2002 Clinton spearheads a misguided attempt to bring Tata to Buffalo…misguided (imho) in the belief that the best way to justify the existence of offshore IT is to show that the “outsourcers also outsource.” But, the attempt exemplifies her continued openness to free trade.

“Four years ago, Clinton brought Tata Consultancy Services to Buffalo amid great fanfare and promises that its local operation might eventually employ up to 100 people. But the India-based company, one of the world’s largest outsourcing consultants, currently employs only about 10 people locally.”

source 2004 After Treasury Secretary John Snow argues that outsourcing may actually lead to a long term increase in jobs (opinions supported by economists Lawrence Klein and Greg Mankiw), Hillary decides she is against it:

“I don’t know what reality the Bush administration is living in, but it’s certainly not the reality I represent, from one end of New York to the other.”

(I guess she didn’t actually say anything in that quote, but the intent is clear.) source 2005 While in India, Clinton puts her sari back on:

“There is no way to legislate against reality. Outsourcing will continue. . . . We are not against all outsourcing; we are not in favor of putting up fences.”

source 2007 To one day become an enemy of Lou Dobbs…one can only dream. Clinton makes a speech in Silicon Valley, getting applause for a comment about increasing H1B allocation. Lou Dobbs thinks this is very bad. Lou Dobbs also thinks that immigration causes leprosy (look it up):

Invest in the US Here’s Clinton urging Indian companies to invest in the US…good advice:

“If the United States continues to outsource jobs to India in increasingly large numbers, people will begin to feel insecure and may very well seek more protection against what they view as unfair competition,” Clinton told Indian technologists during a July speech in Santa Clara, Calif. “America is not just a marketplace to get a foothold in. It’s a place to make lasting investments that will create jobs and economic growth for everyone.”

source Debate at Howard University in June, 2007 And finally, Clinton speaking at a debate at Howard University. Clinton starts with 4:30 remaining, expressing what seems to be the synthesis of her overall opinion - elimination of tax breaks, better training, etc., without explicitly speaking out against free trade. Of course, it’s a cop-out. But, so is almost everything during a presidential campaign:

The Office introduces a turbaned IT guy this season, with characteristic wit. Although I wonder why so many Hollywood shows think it is normal for a Sikh man to wear a turban without a beard, the bit is funny:

link to youtube video

Working with a global team is hectic.

If you run a small business, your work now transcends both the job description and the time zone. You spend days meeting with customers, refining requirements, pushing sales, and cleaning up finances.

At night, your team wakes up, and it is time to manage projects, have strategy meetings, and enforce (nag about) deadlines.

Somehow, you find time for a few hours of sleep before waking up to do the whole thing over again.

If you’re in the Bay Area tomorrow (Thursday), come find out why we still think it’s worth the effort (or not).

Finally, an Indian-American movie I am excited to see.

more info here

You do it every day and never think twice: buy something that was made in another country.

Maybe you make a big purchase, like a Honda or a BMW. Do you then refer to your car as your ‘outsourced’ ride? When you drink with your friends, do you get uncomfortable knowing that your champagne has been ‘outsourced’ to the French? How about when you eat a mango or a banana?

Of course not. Germans make better cars. The French know their wine. And produce comes from where it grows (or where people can pick it cheaply…California).

So why think of software that way? Global IT teams support cost advantages and time efficiencies that domestic teams simply cannot compete with. Done right, software can be developed more quickly and efficiently this way. From cars to wine to software, the principle is the same. It will inevitably get done where it can get done best.

As long as we refer to our work as outsourcing, we are stigmatizing something that is as old as civilization. What the monsoon winds did for the spice trade, the Internet does for software development.

So, let’s agree. Outsourcing is dead (long live outsourcing).

[and yes, this blog will soon have a new name]

Hey there, Mr. Entrepreneur. Ms. Risk Taker. Mr. Mover and Shaker. You (and me) - with your hot-shot IT consultancy or Web 2.0 startup. Think you know what it’s like to scoff at the status quo? Take them risks? Push that bar?

Next time you start feeling like you’re cool, think on Narayana Murthy.

India is still a baby. A few years ago, you decided that you disagree with Mr. Nehru…communism won’t work for your country. So, you decide to follow the solid desi path: open an IT consultancy in India. Only catch: it’s 1981. The Internet? Right. Good luck finding a desktop computer within 50 miles of that run-down two bedroom apartment in the city.

“We were huddled together in a small room in Bombay,” says Murthy, “in the hope of creating a brighter future for ourselves, for the Indian society, and perhaps, we dreamed, even for the world.”

Idealistic for a tech guy. Remember, I mentioned that a few years earlier, he (like almost everyone at the time) believed in Nehru’s socialist vision for India.

“Remember one thing: All of us believed in central planning; all of us believed in socialism because we were all children of a different generation. We were all mesmerized by the charisma of Nehru. Nehru believed in central planning, Nehru believed in socialism. Nehru believed in the Soviet-influenced model of development. So it was not at all unusual for an idealistic man to be completely bowled over by these principles.”

After a lot of thinking, some life experience, and 24 hours in jail (for talking to a French girl on a train about a few of the ills of Communism), Murthy decided that global trade would be better for his country:

“Entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, (is) the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.” (note: he believes the European version of socialism works well.)

Call it outsourcing, or call it what it actually is…globalization, defined by Murthy:

“…sourcing capital from where it is cheapest, sourcing talent from where it is best available, producing where it is most cost effective and selling where the markets are without being constrained by national boundaries.”

A simple concept that eventually lead to Infosys - almost 30 years, more than 70,000 well-paying jobs, 2,000-plus dollar-millionaires, and 20,000-plus rupee millionaires. Oh right, and about taking jobs from Americans (or in this case, Australians):

“A smart journalist in Australia asked me a question at a press conference: ‘You guys are taking all our jobs to India. You should be thrown out.’ I told him that I use an LG refrigerator at home in India. I drink Pepsi and Coke though we have our own Indian drinks. I use a GM car when we have a vibrant automobile industry. I use Cisco routers and a Toshiba tablet PC which are imported. So do you think we should throw all these companies out? I gave him the positive side of all this.”

Thank you, Mr. Murthy.

A few more quotes -

On humility:
“Performance leads to recognition. Recognition brings respect. Respect enhances power. Humility and grace in one’s moments of power enhances (the) dignity of an organization.”

On innovation in India:
“It will happen. Let’s remember that the concept of a free market is still new in India. We are not accustomed to leading from the front. We have just 15 years compared to 200 years elsewhere in terms of an industrial revolution. You need to have a little more patience with India, but it will happen.”

On the sales bias:
“Many of my colleagues have often accused me of a bias towards sales in Infosys. I tell them, unless we can sell well we cannot do anything, such as create jobs, pay good salaries and satisfy investors. Right from the beginning we realized that we have to focus on selling better and better in the marketplace.”

On taking that chance:
“As I think across a wide variety of settings in my life, I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial.”

On valuing employees:
“Our assets walk out of the door each evening. We have to make sure that they come back the next morning.”

On contributing to society (he is currently chief ‘mentor’ at Infosys):
“I believe that we have all at some time eaten the fruit from trees that we did not plant. In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, it behooves us in turn to plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will largely benefit generations to come. I believe this is our sacred responsibility, one that I hope you will shoulder in time.”

Finally, a message that resonates with those in the shirt-wearing business.

selling exclusively at desithreads

From a debate at Howard university last week. It was refreshing to see almost every candidate stress education and removing tax breaks as the two keys to helping America compete for technical jobs.

It is impossible to attend a conference these days without a panel dedicated to “Doing X in the Flat World”. Practicing Law in a Flat World. Automobile manufacturing and the challenges of a Flat World. Best practices for Kabuki Stage Make-up in a Flat World.

Props to Thomas Friedman. In 2004, he barely knew outsourcing existed. Then, he goes to India. Instead of locating his chakras and opening a yoga studio in Pittsburgh, he ends up in Bangalore and gets shell-shocked by all the big buildings. WOW! Cisco is HERE?! You guys have computers in India? DSL? Amazing!!

Just like that, every executive in America has an unread copy of The World Is Flat on their bookshelf, and we’re all using a metaphor that never made that much sense.

So, let’s settle things. The world is not flat. It is curvy. Lumpy. Tilted. Full of nooks and crannies. And as a whole, still ROUND.

What’s wrong with the ‘flat world’ metaphor?
Besides my apparent jealousy of Thomas Friedman’s success, what’s so wrong with his metaphor?

To start with, the image of a flat world is all about capability.

Just a few years ago, Friedman made a case that information work can now happen anywhere, thanks to communications technology, skilled labor, and cost incentives.

Got it, Tom. People in India and China CAN do anything that we can do in the US. They have education. Computers. Telephone headsets.

This may have been a surprise to the majority of Americans in 1996. But, in 2007, it sounds kinda like Al Gore inventing the Internet.

Besides, if someone with a name like Tejas Patel or Timothy Wu was in your 3rd grade math class, you are already aware of what India and China CAN do. If Abhishek Chakrabarty fixed your computer last week, you have no doubt about India’s potential.

But does that mean the world is flat?
If the world is flat, my customer support experience should be the same whether the call center operator lives in San Jose, CA or San Jose, Costa Rica. If it’s flat, Chinese products would have the same quality standards that American ones do. In a flat world, 50% of offshore IT projects wouldn’t fail due to communication and quality issues.

The world is full of strange curves and contours. All this ‘flat world’ talk tends to gloss over the cultural differences, language barriers (even if you speak English, it doesn’t mean you understand it the same way only, isn’t it?), management challenges, time differences etc. that global collaboration brings up.

When we accept that the world is still round, we can have a better conversation about these challenges, deal with the management issues, and work harder on bridging cultural understanding.

It sounds simple-minded, obvious, cliched, etc., I know. But metaphors are powerful things. Once they become part of the vernacular, they have this funny ability to affect our thought process.

Besides, flat is boring.

Curves are a good thing
We recently opened an animation studio in Mumbai. The reason is simple; it’s India’s entertainment capital. The best animators in India arrive from all over the country looking for opportunities.

In the city of Pune, we helped to build one of the best Ruby on Rails teams in the country, because we found a pool of programmers eager to learn new technologies.

And, we continue to handle most of our business from Chandigarh, because we nurtured a skilled set of designers and developers in a city where turnover is low.

So never mind the world, India isn’t even flat.

Nor should it be. Regional specialties are awesome. They can make things more efficient, if you do it right. They can add some spice to your life. And, they can prevent the use of overused, localized cliches that others may not understand.

In short, moving away from the flat world metaphor may spark more conversation about regional specialties, help us to embrace the inherent challenges of outsourcing with more of an open mind, and most importantly, force conference organizers to work harder on their panel titles.

Thomas Friedman has already sold a few million books. Let’s ditch the ‘Flat World’ metaphor. And start celebrating the humps and the lumps.