Author Says Offshoring 'Real WMD' for U.S.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Venkata Pingali <pingali () ISI EDU>
Date: November 1, 2004 4:14:21 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Author Says Offshoring 'Real WMD' for U.S.

Hi,


There are couple of more reinforcing trends:

(a) as quality of life improves in places such as India and China, 
individuals from these countries in whom the US has invested are also 
moving to their native countries taking with them intellectual capital 
that would compete with that in the US

(b) as wallstreet firms bring more venture capital approaches and real 
money to these countries (to keep their profits going), the 
infrastructureand services that made business ventures easy in the 
valley will be replicated elsewhere, chipping away at the source of 
competitive strength.

Let me give you a concrete example of this: I am familiar with an 
ongoing research effort in the US to design networks for resource poor 
environments. It has been in progress for few (4?) years. There is a 
prototype and demonstration. In the last few days I talked to a person 
working with a small company in India who arrived at the same research 
problem while trying to create internet-based services in India. He is 
investing in a small research venture to build products based on his 
ideas for a solution (knowing him I wouldnt write off his ideas). One 
should not be surprised if his product is out there in the market even 
before the research grant for the US based group is exhausted. The 
group in India atleast consists of a couple of phds from US and a guy 
with a decade of research experience. While the real critical problems 
may not be solved by this product-driven semi-research group, the fact 
is that the bar for research has definitely increased.

-Venkata

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