I am updating a presentation I first created a few years aimed at clients about to go to India for an offshore due diligence visit. It is titled "Diamond in the Rough". It describes how the local software industry has been amazingly quality and continuous improvement focused, while all around it shoddy products are delivered and thrive in a large domestic market. Over 50% of all software sites certified at the SEI-CMM Level 5 are in India. But no doubt about it - the software industry is an aberration. China has similar extremes - Shanghai is a proud city which keeps itself very clean compared to the rest of the country. China's industrial pollution is another story.
I saw 2 extreme viewpoints about China and India this week. One in Forbes about quality problems in China. You could extrapolate that easily to India as well. While India did not have communist inefficiencies, they took British ideas about licensing and protected incumbent family houses from global competition. But how do you then explain the Indian software quality focus?
Another by John Hagel (ex McKinsey and a respected contributor to innovation in business and technology) writing about Innovation in China and India. He talks about distribution innovations. Companies like Unilever and Coke have for decades now sold product in those countries in spite of logistical challenges. Not sure I would call those recent innovations.
I am sure we are going to see plenty of extremely positive and negative view points about China and India. In fact, after the BusinessWeek issue titled "Chindia" - I have heard a few conversations talking about the 2 countries as one. How then do you reconcile their competition for oil?
Urban legends and generalizations about the two countries abound. I
was shocked to hear a couple of months ago a company, conservative in
other ways, about to sign an offshore contract say they were foregoing
a trip to India to do due diligence - "what can we find that other US
companies before us have not found".
If you want to do business with these 2 countries (and as I have written on numerous occasions you should) invest in your own due diligence. Ignore the generalizations - positive and negative. They are as reliable as fortune cookie projections.
