Everyone knows that the US no longer leads manufacturing, its all going to china.

I recently heard from Phil McKinney at killerinnovations – that the ‘knowledge economy’ is over. This can be quickly seen:
- most of IT projects get outsourced to India
- almost any job that can be taught an university can be outsource – legal/accounting/engineering

CK Prahalad also discusses outsourcing IT to India. But he draws upon the reduced costs of IT, and how it effects other close industries (see the podcast in my last post).

So if your organisation relies on:
- manufacturing
- knowledge or skills that can be learned

you are in HUGE trouble if you are fighting against this outsourcing.

You NEED to embrace these world changes – or you will be very soon out of business.

Most manufacturing should be through the first wave of changed competition. If they still have high cost IT, legal, accounting – then they need to take stock of the current wave of skills outsourcing.

If you are in a services industry now, you have to wonder how much longer you can survive.

The future is innovation – or an ‘ideas economy’ (Phil McKinney).

So we have progressed through industrial revolution to manufacturing in china, to services outsourcing to India, and now we need to compete globally in the ‘ideas economy’.

CK Prahalad talks a lot about the reduced cost of innovation.

So how long are you going to wait, given:
- more outsourcing pressure
- reduced cost of innovation
- the need to compete in a global ‘ideas economy’