The Americans are loosing it! Fast & Unknowingly.
I recently came across a post by Bruce Nussbaum (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2009/11/american_is_los.html) which makes me believe that the debate about Americans loosing jobs because of outsourcing is a far less alarming than, them loosing the sense of innovation, creativity and conceptulization.
“….Now Fareed is saying what we conceed to be increasingly true—the US is losing its edge in innovation. And with that loss, comes the loss of geopolitical clout. President Obama’s trip to China is about soothing our banker, not pressuring for civil rights. Americans are finding it hard to accept their decline in the world. They can’t admit that smart Asians and Europeans and others are not coming to the US nearly as much as they used to for study. Or that there are increasingly more innovative startups outside the US than inside the country. They don’t see all the people who got advanced degrees at US universities going home to greater opportunities….”
For long Americans have been known to be great at formulating ideas and revolutionizing the industrial space by out-of-the-box ideas and solutions. Has there been a decline in such ideologies? I may not have substantial facts to support it and many may believe that many US born online properties (including social networking sites) are examples of innovation. But I beg to differ. I would like to evaluate this based on the achievements in conceptulizing and evolving processes and implementing cost-effective solutions.
Over the last ten years, the business of outsourcing has grown from simply outsourcing/ offshoring low-end process-driven jobs to high-end creative jobs. The vendors across the world are now boasting about their capability to work from concept-to-implementation. Have the American taken a back-seat and prefer to only use and manage services?
In my opinion, its time the Americans stopped banking on their second best skill of packaging and marketing themselves well, and take up hands-on work that involves greater innovation. The same will have to inculcated amongst the youth in America. Only then will we see the revival supremacy the U.S holds in the field on innovation and technology.
Cheers America!
Nailed it!