Insourcing = incoring for Russia
■"Modest Now, Russian Outsourcing Has Big Hopes," by Erin E. Arvedlund, New York Times, 15 December 2004, p. W1.
When did Russia get its first outsourcing deal from American IT companies? It was in 1991, and the U.S. company involved was Hewlett Packard
Listen to this bit of globalization analysis from the guy who pulled off that deal 13 years ago, and has been pulling them off ever since, Alexis Sukharev:
I had a meeting recently with the U.S. deputy secretary of comer, and he said offshoring is good for the United States. I think it's bad for small groups of people who suffer a lot, particularly outsourcing of white-collar jobs. But the Democrats made it a major campaign pillar, which was simply populist. The world is too simply about globalization now. Outsourcing is unstoppable.
Russia is gunning, not unlike China, to become the next India in IT services outsourcing. The government is backing giant software programming centers much like they did "science cities" during the Soviet phase. Russia's take for now is small compared to India's, or only $500m to India's $11b, but Russia hopes to be up to $2b in two years time.
To insource high-end jobs from the Old Core is to "incore" Russia; it's to make Russia indispensable in something besides natural gas. Cybernetics is another venue where Russia could become a key Core-wide player, given its large talent pool on that subject, but it needs to connect that labor with companies and money that can do something with it.
Education is not the hold-up for Russia on outsourcing: lack of infrastructure and English speakers is. To solve both is to see Russia connect up to the Old Core in a bigger way.
And this will happen.