Offshore Outsourcers Offer a Sustainable Edge, Path to Globalization

I interviewed John Seely Brown back in 1998, when he was still chief scientist of Xerox Corp. and director of its Palo Alto Research Center. At the time his big thing was ubiquitous computing -- the notion that computing would become transparent but embedded in everything we use. Seamless interfaces would be especially important as businesses increasingly outsourced processes, on- or offshore. "The only sustainable edge a business has," he told me, "is to learn faster than its competitor."

Fast forward to 2005 and Seely Brown's new book, The Only Sustainable Edge, co-written with management consultant John Hagel III. That edge is "accelerated capability building" -- the ability to advance one's core business through strategic offshore partnering and collaboration. You've already heard about this -- offshore outsourcers are moving the needle from cheap labor to value-added services. So if you follow the business press, this book doesn't offer anything new. But it does nicely summarize the current path of globalization. (Harvard Business School Press, $25, 218 pages)

Anne McCrory is editorial director of CIO Decisions and the CIO Decisions conference. Write to her at amccrory@ciodecisions.com.

This was first published in June 2005

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