Andy Grove, the billionaire co-founder of Intel, challenges the conventional wisdom about offshoring jobs:
Consider this passage by Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder: “The TV manufacturing industry really started here, and at one point employed many workers. But as TV sets became ‘just a commodity,’ their production moved offshore to locations with much lower wages. And nowadays the number of television sets manufactured in the U.S. is zero. A failure? No, a success.”
I disagree. Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today’s “commodity” manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry. [Emphasis added]
Read the whole article here.
It is ironic that so many of these "innovative" U.S., er, excuse me, "global" technology companies have killed U.S. innovation through offshoring. I am very glad to see a founder of one of the biggest U.S. tech firms come around on this issue.
Posted by: Owen Sweeney | 07/08/2010 at 06:41 PM