(Not) Talking About Race

It’s been an “interesting” time in Cambridge, Massachusetts (where I live) in the past week.  Every day the front story above the fold of the Boston Globe has been about one aspect or another of the controversy around the arrest of a black man, Harvard Professor Louis Gates, by a white man, Cambridge Police Officer [...]

Recession Driving Changes in Captive Center Strategies?

A recent article in the Wall St. Journal consolidated reporting on a number of recent changes in so-called captive centers (IT or back-office services operations in India owned by non-Indian, usually US or UK, businesses).  While the leading sentence talks about “reversing a  a decade-long trend,” I think the article reveals a more complex picture.
The [...]

From Wall Street to Bangalore…how will this play out in India’s IT services?

I spent the weekend glued to my laptop screen, repeatedly checking for updates on Lehman’s situation, as well as Merrill and AIG.  Like a rubbernecker watching a highway accident, I couldn’t stay away, emotions surging through me as disaster unfolded in front of my eyes.
While most of the news is about the FSI companies themselves, [...]

Mixed Reviews of Outsourcing in China

The past few weeks have brought a couple of notes about outsourcing IT services to China, with rather different perspectives.
McKinsey’s recent research note notes some key challenges: lack of employees with strong English skills and international project management capabilities, and poor intellectual property protection. But the note also highlights strengths, such as the large [...]

Sandeep Sood on the Not-So-Flat World

I’ve been a fan of Sandeep Sood’s wickedly funny comic “Doubtsourcing” for some years now. (He seems to be taking a breather right now, writing about big B’s campaign, but that’s another story…)
Yesterday his newsletter pointed me to an excellent short – and humorous – article in Forbes about outsourcing to India. If [...]