Ordinary Gweilo

Simon mentioned this a week ago based on an article in The Economist, but here is another one that challenges the myth that outsourcing is bad for the American economy.

Someone recommended a book to me a couple of years back which takes an even more radical view. It is “Living on the Fault Line” by Geoffrey A. Moore, and his basic thesis is that companies should outsource every activity that doesn’t give them a competitive advantage. Management waste their time worrying about things that don’t really matter, and which could be taken over by a third party who would do a better job and care much more about what they were doing. Plus the people doing the work would have a better career in a company that was actually focused on what they did.

I still reckon that smart companies will outsource a lot more of what they do, whether to a specialist just down the road or one in India or China.