Innovation Gap in India.

These are the comments posted in one of the blogs:
http://rate.forbes.com/comments/CommentServlet?op=cpage&sourcename=story&StoryURI=2009/02/12/india-innovation-entrpreneur-technology-enterprise-tech_0213_india.html&com=51510

by one of the readers of that blog.

Why am I posting that content in my blog? This will help us in improving our quality and look into those aspects which we need to improve on. As the famous saying goes : "Failure is the stepping stone for success!".

Posted by jefftonkel 02/13/09 12:06 PM EST


My point of view --As an entrepreneur I have been the CEO of several startups (one that used India development), the VP of Product Management for Webex (China development), Tandem Computers (India outsourcing), and most recently EVP Marketing for Integral (using India development). So I have had considerable direct experience with the subject.Back in the late 1980's and the early 1990's Tandem Computers successfully used India outsourcers to maintain stable products and other technologies that were not leading edge for the company. This worked well because the application or infrastructure was well understood and innovation was NOT required.By the early 2000's the cost advantage of offshoring to India became clear to VCs and many startups began to use India outsourcing, as first a way to reduce cost for some part of the technology, but eventually startups tried to use India for development of leading edge software applications. You can include me as one CEO that tried.In my experience using India or China for outsourcing of new technology or using India or China for development where the startup owns the subsidiary has been a TOTAL failure.The lack of skilled developers (that have perhaps ever written code for a similar application), the lack of innovation (the ability to create a better product than spec's), the drive to build large organizations with juniors doing the work and seniors only managing, and the complete lack of any understanding of the use for the product results in poor product quality, poor delivery schedules, and a significant lack of product innovation.Again, the bottom line for the startup is higher cost than anticipated exacerbated by lazy cost management on the part of the startup, late time to market, poor product quality, lack of product innovation.If I remember my history correctly, The Mythical Man Month, a book written back in the late 1960's, was a proponent of small development teams with little man