America's R&D wake-up call
America's R&D wake-up call
Date: Thursday, March 06, 2003 11:27 AM
H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
It's difficult to fathom why anyone would advocate giving unemployed
H-1Bs jobs as research fellowships working for the Department Homeland
Security - but that's just what the CBS article advocates.
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid={2B5CBF33-899B-45CC-81DD-C7DFD5959D68}&siteid=mktw
TECHWATCH
America's R&D wake-up call
Commentary: Foreign tech rivals evoke Detroit's doom
By Mike Tarsala, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 12:25 AM ET March 5, 2003
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- If those who don't remember their history are
doomed to repeat it, then Silicon Valley's tech executives had better
crack open their textbooks.
The generation that built the world's greatest technological companies
may be on the cusp of finding out that nothing is more vulnerable than
entrenched success -- something Detroit learned the hard way in the
1970s.
Thirty years ago, most Americans assumed that the auto industry was
teeming with innovation and competition. Ford, General Motors, and
Chrysler fought it out every year to deliver the biggest cars with the
most bells and whistles.
Then came the oil shock, and snaking lines behind every filling station
in America that still had gas to sell.
It gave rise to a new level of competition from the Japanese. After
years of studying U.S. manufacturing methods, Honda, Datsun and Toyota
hit the American roads with autos that were more fuel-efficient, less
costly, and built to exacting standards. It took the Big Three years to
see through their hubris and begin playing catch-up. Some would argue
they never did.
The Silicon Valley equivalent of the '70s automotive revolution is the
bursting of the tech bubble. Foreign companies that have long studied
U.S. tech manufacturing now have a golden opportunity to enter the
worldwide market with less expensive IBM-like computers and Intel-like
chips at a time of American competitive lethargy.
Healthy paranoia
Square-jawed U.S. tech executives -- many of whom style themselves
after Bill Gates of Microsoft or Jack Welch of General Electric --
don't seem very concerned about foreign threats. They wax poetic about
having a healthy paranoia about competition. But in most instances,
they're thinking more about a lab down the freeway than they are about
ones across the Pacific.
That's a mistake at a time when, as CBS.MarketWatch.com reported this
week, R&D spending by the biggest U.S. tech companies is on the wane.
Many overseas rivals are now investing heavily to take share from their
American counterparts, speeding up the inevitable process of industry
globalization.
Americans need to be more concerned about the competitive threats
abroad -- especially during times of economic uncertainty.
International competition helps keep prices low, but any innovation
slowdown in the U.S., coupled with the economic realities of war and
the eventual arrival of more overseas competition, will affect CEO
jobs, tens of thousands of tech workers, and possibly the entire
nation's standard of living. The effects ripple far beyond the tech
industry, since national productivity is a result of continued U.S.
technology innovation.
China, India, and even Russia have learned a lot from the U.S. in
recent years, forming close partnerships between universities and
industry to more quickly turn the best research ideas into products.
Getting on campuses
Some overseas rivals even have tech partnerships with leading American
universities. Germany's Siemens says one of its top research labs is
just minutes from the campus of the University of California at
Berkeley. The goal is to have the company's "venture technologists"
constantly visiting Berkeley's labs, so they can identify the best
research and quickly turn the students' work into finished goods with a
Siemens nameplate.
The U.S. should take a lesson from the Germans. Congress should be
lobbying to get venture technologists from American companies on more
campuses at top technology universities in Germany, India -- even in
China.
Instead of sending future tech wealth abroad, we need to open our doors
to more top foreign scientists. We're sending H-1B visa holders home
with pink slips and a basket of skills they learned from U.S.
companies. We should be giving the brightest of them research
fellowships working for the Department Homeland Security.
Above all, America needs to train the next great generation. The
nation's educators need to make math and science top education
priorities. U.S. elementary and secondary students continue to test
below their international peers. Most don't even meet national
proficiency standards, as schools are teaching advanced math concepts
later than in other industrialized nations.
The threats to American tech dominance are real. While U.S. tech R&D
falls, the networking routers from Huawei Technologies in China and
software code from Wipro in India are today's equivalent to the U.S.
arrival of the Honda CVCC and the Datsun 510 in the 1970s.
Looking at all the horses and men being thrown at tech innovation in
developing countries, it's hard not to feel as though Silicon Valley is
close to turning into Humpty Dumpty.
Mike Tarsala is a San Francisco-based reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com.
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