With a hat tip to the Larkster….
The Herald had this editorial this morning.
- Government target for ICT sector’s contribution to GDP: 10 per cent by 2012.
- Estimated number of workers needed to reach that goal: 66,000.
- Number of people working in the industry as of late last year: 22,000.
- Number of tertiary IT graduates: 1200 a year.
As Andy so succinctly puts it, Houston, We have a problem! Of course the traditional answer to this is that NZ will have the ideas and outsource the actual “work” to code cutting power houses like India and Eastern Europe. This is an answer without an answer. As Rod has pointed out in the past;
- You lose efficiency when you outsource core work
- You lose control when you outsource core work
- The product suffers when you outsource core work
What people don’t mention is that we’re simply not generating enough ideas to keep the equivalent of 66,000 people busy (be it here or in Mumbai). We can’t compete on price and we’re not developing the ideas base to be able to compete on something other than price.
Houston. We REALLY have a problem…..
