Brain Power
I’m trying to get my business off the ground and in the process I’ve done a lot of research and talked to a lot of people to get ideas and help. Of course the topic of outsourcing came up as well as the topic of the United States losing it’s position of power in the world. China and India seem to be the big scary threats to our dominance, so I decided to do some thinking about how they compare to the U.S. Some quick math was startling and very interesting at the same time.
The C.I.A world fact book’s profile on India estimates India’s population is 1,095,351,995 (July 2006 est.). The fact book’s profile on China estimates China’s population is 1,313,973,713 (July 2006 est.) and the profile on the United States estimates the U.S.’s population is 298,444,215 (July 2006 est.).
If you took the smartest 27% of the Indian population or just 23% of the Chinese population they would equal our entire population. That is amazing and scary to me. If our competitive advantage is hiring smart people at a lower cost in other countries we are in serious trouble.
The next decade will be an interesting time as power shifts, economies of scale are sought and we are forced to be more innovative or move to the back of the room.
What will come as a result of all this?
