Several of my friends have told me that my blog has a doomsday-ish ring to it. If you think I sound like an alarmist, you should read a book called The Elephant and the Dragon by Robyn Meredith. Robyn is a foreign correspondent for Forbes magazine and reports on China and India. And I must say that she has done a fantastic job of recapping the development of China and India as the next economic superpowers. And the fact that she is reporting from the field, based on first-hand observations, does add credence to her estimates and projections.
Robyn has a couple of very innovative concepts she pushes through in her book. First, she calls the development of China (as the factory of the world) and India (as the back-office of the world) as the Third Industrial Revolution, at par with the developments in Britain in the 1800s and the assembly line invented by Henry Ford in the early 1900s. Second, she introduces the concept of the Disassembly Line. With recent developments in supply chain management, technology and network connectivity, one of the drivers behind the growth of China and India is the ability to disaggregate the manufacturing and back-office processes into more and more granular levels.
Just to highlight a few quantitative and qualitative observations that Robyn makes in her book:
There are significant downsides to this growth spurt as well.
What does all this mean for the US? I mentioned in an earlier post that the only way for the US to stay competitive is to keep innovating. Robyn articulates this point much better by emphasizing that:
All in all, Robyn has done a phenomenal job of paraphrasing such complex issues as the emergence of China & India, projections for the next few decades and the implications for US companies & employees. Highly recommended reading.
Sampath
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