Skip to main content

The power of an ecosystem

The late 90s to early 2000s were all part of Indias service economy boom. Everybody who was anybody became an engineer. Every engineer from mining to petrochemical became interested in IT services. If not anything, it offered a steady income for an aspirational country. But this interest in services also came at a cost. In my own experience, I found people thinking purely of work as a service, devoid of too much initiative or risk and spending their lives as it were on a spec sheet and clients orders. It also de-skilled people - unless they were careful about building a skill - it was an instant road of managerial anonymity and a career devoid of any skills.

Along the way, for those who are familiar, were lamentations from people that all these services are not enabling India is not producing the next Microsoft or even a web browser. There were IT services giants, but they were not producing any products. And such it went that people argued that services was an industry while others said how unskilled it was an industry and about how Indians were wasting their lives working in BPOs and so on.

Needless to say, all these lamentations did not lead anywhere. A slowdown came about in 2007/8 and then the cloud killed many basic manual service work streams and RPA did what ever else was left. And all those who claimed the primacy of Indias IT service industry continue to do so, but by now it is clear that there is no services industry - atleast no future glory. It is a steady and sure decline, but somehow it does not seem to matter for Indias tech industry today.

So what happened? That is my next piece - the power of an ecosystem....
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Most Powerful Idea in the World

The above titled book by William Rosen (and I am still reading it) has set me thinking. As it goes through the industrial revolution (rather, the beginning of it) - it explores as to why the industrial revolution happened when it happened. Rather, how a lot of factors came to play in making it happen. For that alone this book is worth a read. It is worth reading how a 'dotcom' kind of ecosystem existed in England with the combination of tinkerers, rich patrons, correspondence and of course, the right kind of institutions. When one studies engineering, or even science, what we hear are the rock star stories. For instance, we know that Archimedes had a 'Eureka' moment. Likewise, in this book, I realized how a 'Eureka' moment helped James Watt resolve the problematic steam engine into a workable design. While it is very romantic to believe that discoveries happen accidentally, the fact remains that somebody like a James Watt (or others) slogged through many man...
Post a Comment
Read more

Narendra Modi, Presentation Skills

This is the latest speech by Narendra Modi which was delivered yesterday at the India Today Conclave. Much analysis has been carried out on this speech, but here is a different perspective. I have written about Presentation skills - and to me this is a video that touches upon almost all aspects of presentation skills. For someone who wants to learn public speaking, presentation skills this speech is a great example. It is well worth your time, if you want to see presentation skills in action (and the bonus of a great speech). The speech is largely in Hindi, though there are parts in English as well.  Mr. Modi uses a video at the start (which is missing here) - so the speech uses other media as well - surprising the audience - since politicians arent generally given to videos. That initial video has made the audience look forward to more. The speech is extempore - which can only happen when one knows the subject thoroughly. I personally don't know how much Mr. Modi practices...
1 comment
Read more