Over the last two decades, India has become a global hub for software development and offshoring of back office services, as we call it, and what we were interested in finding out was that because of this huge industry that has started over the last two decades in India, offshoring software development and back office services, there's been a flight of white collar jobs from the developed world to India. When this is combined with the loss of manufacturing jobs to China, it has, you know, led to considerable angst amongst the Western populations.
在过去的二十年里,印度已经成为 全球软件开发以及 离岸后台服务的中心 我们希望了解的是 这个庞大的产业 自二十年前在印度崛起 由于离岸软件开发和后台服务 白领工作岗位也因此 从发达国家转移到印度 加上制造业岗位 外包到中国,正如你所知道的,造成了相当程度的 来自西方社会的焦虑
In fact, if you look at polls, they show a declining trend for support for free trade in the West. Now, the Western elites, however, have said this fear is misplaced. For example, if you have read — I suspect many of you have done so — read the book by Thomas Friedman called "The World Is Flat," he said, basically, in his book that, you know, this fear for free trade is wrong because it assumes, it's based on a mistaken assumption that everything that can be invented has been invented. In fact, he says, it's innovation that will keep the West ahead of the developing world, with the more sophisticated, innovative tasks being done in the developed world, and the less sophisticated, shall we say, drudge work being done in the developing world.
事实上,调查数据显示 在西方,对自由贸易的支持者人数正在下降 但是,如今,西方的精英指出 这是一种错位的恐惧 我举个例子,如果你读过,我想很多观众都 看过,Thomas Friedman的书 书名是《地球是平的》,其中谈到 对于自由贸易的恐惧是错误的 因为这个观点来自一个错误的假设 那就是一切的发明创造皆已完成 而实际上,作者说,西方社会领先发展中国家的优势 来自于创新 当更复杂,更新颖的任务 在发达国家完成以后,那些较简单 或者说辛苦的工作 就被转移到发展中国家
Now, what we were trying to understand was, is this true? Could India become a source, or a global hub, of innovation, just like it's become a global hub for back office services and software development? And for the last four years, my coauthor Phanish Puranam and I spent investigating this topic.
那我们想搞清楚的 就是,这个的观点正确吗? 印度能否成为创新的源泉或全球中心 就像成为 后台服务和软件开发的中心一样? 过去的四年里,我和合著者 Phanish Puranam 就在研究这个课题
Initially, or, you know, as people would say, you know, in fact the more aggressive people who are supporting the Western innovative model, say, "Where are the Indian Googles, iPods and Viagras, if the Indians are so bloody smart?" (Laughter)
开始是,正如你们所知到的,人们会说 特别是支持西方创新理论模型的拥护者 他们说 ”印度的Googles, iPods,和Viagras在哪里 如果印度人真有那么聪明的话?“
So initially, when we started our research, we went and met several executives, and we asked them, "What do you think? Will India go from being a favored destination for software services and back office services to a destination for innovation?" They laughed. They dismissed us. They said, "You know what? Indians don't do innovation." The more polite ones said, "Well, you know, Indians make good software programmers and accountants, but they can't do the creative stuff."
所以起初,在最开始的研究阶段 我们去拜访数位高管,向他们提问 ”您觉得,印度是否可能从 软件和后台服务的目的地转型 成为创新的目的地呢?“ 他们笑了,并把我们请出门 有的会说”你知道吗?印度人不会创新“ 比较有礼貌的版本是”印度人 有当出色的程序远和会计师的天赋, 但他们没有创造力“
Sometimes, it took a more, took a veneer of sophistication, and people said, "You know, it's nothing to do with Indians. It's really the rule-based, regimented education system in India that is responsible for killing all creativity." They said, instead, if you want to see real creativity, go to Silicon Valley, and look at companies like Google, Microsoft, Intel.
有时候,表达方式更委婉一些 人们会说”不是印度人的问题 是僵化的教育体系的错 是条条框框抹杀了创意“ 所以他们建议,如果要了解创造力 要去硅谷,去参观 Google (谷歌), Microsoft (微软)和Intel(英特尔)这样的公司
So we started examining the R&D and innovation labs of Silicon Valley. Well, interestingly, what you find there is, usually you are introduced to the head of the innovation lab or the R&D center as they may call it, and more often than not, it's an Indian. (Laughter)
所以我们就开始研究 硅谷的研发中心和创新实验室 有意思的是,在那里 我们发现通常创新实验室 或者研发中心的一把手 往往就是一个印度人
So I immediately said, "Well, but you could not have been educated in India, right? You must have gotten your education here." It turned out, in every single case, they came out of the Indian educational system. So we realized that maybe we had the wrong question, and the right question is, really, can Indians based out of India do innovative work?
当然我们的第一反应是”您一定不是 在印度接受教育的吧? 您一定是在这里上的学吧?” 结果,每一次 他们其实都是印度教育的产物 于是我们意识到我们没有问对问题 正确的问题其实是, 印度的印度人 可以创新吗?
So off we went to India. We made, I think, about a dozen trips to Bangalore, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Delhi, Hyderabad, you name it, to examine what is the level of corporate innovation in these cities. And what we found was, as we progressed in our research, was, that we were asking really the wrong question. When you ask, "Where are the Indian Googles, iPods and Viagras?" you are taking a particular perspective on innovation, which is innovation for end users, visible innovation.
于是我们飞往印度 我们多次到班加罗尔(Bangalore), 孟买 (Mumbai), 古尔加翁(Gurgaon) 德里(Delhi), 海得拉巴(Hyderabad)等地, 探寻 这些城市的商业创新程度 我们的发现是,随着研究的深入 看来提出的问题本身的确是不对的 当有人问“印度的谷歌 iPods和伟哥在哪里?“时,提问者的立场 是站在终端用户角度而言的创新 是看得见的创新
Instead, innovation, if you remember, some of you may have read the famous economist Schumpeter, he said, "Innovation is novelty in how value is created and distributed." It could be new products and services, but it could also be new ways of producing products. It could also be novel ways of organizing firms and industries.
而其实,如果你还记得, 也许你们读过著名的经济学家熊彼得(Schumpeter)的著作 他说“创新是 用新的方式创造和分配价值” 它既可以是新的产品和服务 也可以是不一样的制造产品的方法 还可以是崭新的企业和行业的组织形式
Once you take this, there's no reason to restrict innovation, the beneficiaries of innovation, just to end users. When you take this broader conceptualization of innovation, what we found was, India is well represented in innovation, but the innovation that is being done in India is of a form we did not anticipate, and what we did was we called it "invisible innovation." And specifically, there are four types of invisible innovation that are coming out of India.
按照这种理论,创新就不仅仅局限于 受益于创新的终端用户 当你从广义角度定义创新时 你就会发现,印度其实处处 有创新,只是印度的创新形式 并不是人们所预期的,我们把它称之为 隐形的创新 具体地说,印度式创新又可分为 四个类别
The first type of invisible innovation out of India is what we call innovation for business customers, which is led by the multinational corporations, which have -- in the last two decades, there have been 750 R&D centers set up in India by multinational companies employing more than 400,000 professionals. Now, when you consider the fact that, historically, the R&D center of a multinational company was always in the headquarters, or in the country of origin of that multinational company, to have 750 R&D centers of multinational corporations in India is truly a remarkable figure.
其一 是对商业顾客的创新 这是由跨国企业引领的 在过去二十年里 由跨国公司在印度建立的研发中心达750个 雇佣了超过40万名专业人士 当我们考虑到 跨国公司的研发中心历来 都设在公司总部,或者初始国 所以位于印度的750所 跨国公司的研发中心 这个数字是惊人的
When we went and talked to the people in those innovation centers and asked them what are they working on, they said, "We are working on global products." They were not working on localizing global products for India, which is the usual role of a local R&D. They were working on truly global products, and companies like Microsoft, Google, AstraZeneca, General Electric, Philips, have already answered in the affirmative the question that from their Bangalore and Hyderabad R&D centers they are able to produce products and services for the world. But of course, as an end user, you don't see that, because you only see the name of the company, not where it was developed.
当我们去到这些研发中心并对里面的工作人员进行访谈 询问他们在做什么时 他们回答“我们做的是全球性的产品” 他们并不是在本地化全球性产品 来适应印度市场,这通常就是地方性研发中心的角色 他们做的是真正的全球性产品 而诸如微软,谷歌,阿斯利康制药厂(AstraZeneca) 通用电器,飞利浦这样的企业 已经肯定的回应他们在班加罗尔 和海德拉巴的研发中心足以胜任 为全球市场开发产品和提供服务 当让,作为终端用户,这是你看不到的 因为你看到的仅仅是公司的名字 而不是产品的研发地
The other thing we were told then was, "Yes, but, you know, the kind of work that is coming out of the Indian R&D center cannot be compared to the kind of work that is coming out of the U.S. R&D centers." So my coauthor Phanish Puranam, who happens to be one of the smartest people I know, said he's going to do a study. What he did was he looked at those companies that had an R&D center in USA and in India, and then he looked at a patent that was filed out of the U.S. and a similar patent filed out of the same company's subsidiary in India, so he's now comparing the patents of R&D centers in the U.S. with R&D centers in India of the same company to find out what is the quality of the patents filed out of the Indian centers and how do they compare with the quality of the patents filed out of the U.S. centers?
也有人对我们说“即便如此,这些来自印度 研发中心的产品 还是比不上那些 来自美国研发中心的产品。” 有鉴于此,我的合著人Phanish Puranam,他刚好也是 我所认识的最聪明的人,他说 他要做一个研究 对象是在美国和印度 同时拥有研发中心的公司 看看那些在美国提交的专利申请 和同一公司在印度分支机构提出的 类似专利申请 这样来比较同一公司位于美国 和印度提交的专利申请 希望评估印度提交的专利申请的质量 以及跟美国提交的那些 申请的含金量的差异
Interestingly, what he finds is — and by the way, the way we look at the quality of a patent is what we call forward citations: How many times does a future patent reference the older patent? — he finds something very interesting. What we find is that the data says that the number of forward citations of a patent filed out of a U.S. R&D subsidiary is identical to the number of forward citations of a patent filed by an Indian subsidiary of the same company within that company. So within the company, there's no difference in the forward citation rates of their Indian subsidiaries versus their U.S. subsidiaries. So that's the first kind of invisible innovation coming out of India.
有趣的是,他发现 顺便一提的是,我们比较专利质量的方法是 引用前人(forward citations): 就是看后来的专利 对之前的专利的引用次数 他的发现非常有意思 我们的数据表明 在同一家公司, 来自美国研发中心的专利申请的被引用次数 和印度研发中心的 是一模一样的 换而言之,在一家公司 印度和美国分公司的专利引用率 是一样的 这是第一种印度式创新
The second kind of invisible innovation coming out of India is what we call outsourcing innovation to Indian companies, where many companies today are contracting Indian companies to do a major part of their product development work for their global products which are going to be sold to the entire world. For example, in the pharma industry, a lot of the molecules are being developed, but you see a major part of that work is being sent to India. For example, XCL Technologies, they developed two of the mission critical systems for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, one to avoid collisions in the sky, and another to allow landing in zero visibility. But of course, when you climb onto the Boeing 787, you are not going to know that this is invisible innovation out of India.
第二种来自印度的创新 我们称之为外包创新 如今很多公司都把 产品开发的主要部分外包给印度公司 服务于他们的全球性产品 再卖给全世界 比方说,制药行业在开发很多分子 其中的很大一部分 是在印度完成的 比如XCL Technologies公司 他们为波音公司新的787客机开发 其中两个关键的航行系统 一个防止飞行相撞 另一个用于实现零能见度着陆 当然,当你登上波音787客机时 是不可能觉察到这些隐形的 来自印度的创新的
The third kind of invisible innovation coming out of India is what we call process innovations, because of an injection of intelligence by Indian firms. Process innovation is different from product innovation. It's about how do you create a new product or develop a new product or manufacture a new product, but not a new product itself?
第三种印度式创新 是基于印度公司的才智 而产生的过程创新 过程创新和产品创新是不一样的 它是关于新产品开发,创造或生产的 流程的创新 而不是产品本身
Only in India do millions of young people dream of working in a call center. What happens — You know, it's a dead end job in the West, what high school dropouts do. What happens when you put hundreds of thousands of smart, young, ambitious kids on a call center job? Very quickly, they get bored, and they start innovating, and they start telling the boss how to do this job better, and out of this process innovation comes product innovations, which are then marketed around the world.
只有在印度才有上百万的年轻人 向往在呼叫中心工作 在西方,这样的工作是没有出头之日的 是中学辍学者才做的事 当你把成千上万名 聪明年轻又雄心勃勃的年轻人 放在一个呼叫中心里,会出现什么情况呢? 不用多久,他们就感到无聊开始想新的点子 然后就开始跟老板说如何能更好地完成工作 而这个流程地创新则带来了产品地创新 再被推广到世界其他地方
For example, 24/7 Customer, traditional call center company, used to be a traditional call center company. Today they're developing analytical tools to do predictive modeling so that before you pick up the phone, you can guess or predict what this phone call is about. It's because of an injection of intelligence into a process which was considered dead for a long time in the West.
其中的例子如24/7 Customer (全天候客服公司) 传统的呼叫中心公司,沿用的是固有 的形式。而今天他们开发的 分析工具可以进行模型预测 在拿起话筒前就能猜测 或预计这通来电的内容 这都是由于对西方长期认为没有前景的行业 的流程加入了有智慧的改进
And the last kind of innovation, invisible innovation coming out of India is what we call management innovation. It's not a new product or a new process but a new way to organize work, and the most significant management innovation to come out of India, invented by the Indian offshoring industry is what we call the global delivery model. What the global delivery model allows is, it allows you to take previously geographically core-located tasks, break them up into parts, send them around the world where the expertise and the cost structure exists, and then specify the means for reintegrating them. Without that, you could not have any of the other invisible innovations today.
最后一种印度式的隐形创新 我们称之为管理创新 它不是产品和流程的创新 而是工作安排的创新 而来自印度的最著名的管理创新 是由外包行业提供的 全球服务模式 在这个模式下,可以实现 把从前受地理位置局限的任务 细化再分发给世界各地的 专业人士手上或者成本结构适宜的地区 再列明重新整合以上服务的方式 缺了这个模式,今天的其他任何一个隐形创新都 无法实现
So, what I'm trying to say is, what we are finding in our research is, that if products for end users is the visible tip of the innovation iceberg, India is well represented in the invisible, large, submerged portion of the innovation iceberg.
所以我想说的是,我们的研究发现 如果说终端用户手中的产品是 创新之中看得见的冰山一角的话 那印度的创新则是隐没在水下的 更为巨大的部分
Now, this has, of course, some implications, and so we developed three implications of this research. The first is what we called sinking skill ladder, and now I'm going to go back to where I started my conversation with you, which was about the flight of jobs. Now, of course, when we first, as a multinational company, decide to outsource jobs to India in the R&D, what we are going to do is we are going to outsource the bottom rung of the ladder to India, the least sophisticated jobs, just like Tom Friedman would predict.
当然这个也带来了启示 我们归结为三点 第一, 下降的技能阶梯 让我回到对话的开头 谈到岗位流失的时候 当然,一开始,跨国公司 决定要外包服务到印度的研发中心时 我们是把业务中最低端的部分 外包出去,那些都是最简单的工作 跟Tom Friedman预测的是一样的
Now, what happens is, when you outsource the bottom rung of the ladder to India for innovation and for R&D work, at some stage in the very near future you are going to have to confront a problem, which is where does the next step of the ladder people come from within your company? So you have two choices then: Either you bring the people from India into the developed world to take positions in the next step of the ladder — immigration — or you say, there's so many people in the bottom step of the ladder waiting to take the next position in India, why don't we move the next step to India?
当你把最底下的工作 外包到印度进行创新和研发后 不久,未来的某个时刻将要 面对一个问题 往上一层的员工 在公司内部从何而来呢? 有两个选择 要么把印度的人才 提拔到发达国家 通过移民 不然你也可以说既然在印度有这么多 从事底层职位的人员等待升迁 何不干脆把提升的职位也转移到印度去?
What we are trying to say is that once you outsource the bottom end of the ladder, you -- it's a self-perpetuating act, because of the sinking skill ladder, and the sinking skill ladder is simply the point that you can't be an investment banker without having been an analyst once. You can't be a professor without having been a student. You can't be a consultant without having been a research associate. So, if you outsource the least sophisticated jobs, at some stage, the next step of the ladder has to follow.
我们想说的是 一旦职业阶梯底层的工作外包出去 由于阶梯下移,自然而然 跟其他简单的逻辑一样 要成为投资银行家 就要先当一个分析员 要当教授就要先做一回学生 要当咨询师就必须有当研究员的经历 所以简单的工作被外包后 某个时刻,它上面的职位就要跟随这个趋势
The second thing we bring up is what we call the browning of the TMT, the top management teams. If the R&D talent is going to be based out of India and China, and the largest growth markets are going to be based out of India and China, you have to confront the problem that your top management of the future is going to have to come out of India and China, because that's where the product leadership is, that's where the important market leadership is.
此外,我们想提一下 TMT (高级管理团队)的亚洲化 假设未来研发中心将设在印度 和中国,而增长最快的市场 也将是这两个国家的话 你要面临的问题是 未来你的高级管理人员 必然来自印度和中国 因为那是产品领导力 市场领导力的来源
Right? And the last thing we point out in this slide, which is, you know, that to this story, there's one caveat. India has the youngest growing population in the world. This demographic dividend is incredible, but paradoxically, there's also the mirage of mighty labor pools. Indian institutes and educational system, with a few exceptions, are incapable of producing students in the quantity and quality needed to keep this innovation engine going, so companies are finding innovative ways to overcome this, but in the end it does not absolve the government of the responsibility for creating this educational structure.
对吧?最后我想说的是 这里还有一个警示 印度拥有全球最年轻的人口 这个人口红利是巨大的 但相对的 也造成强劲的劳动力市场这个幻境 印度的教育机构和教育体系 大部分无法培养 足够数量的合格人才 来满足持续创新的需求 所以企业也在寻找解决这个问题的新路子 但终究,教育结构的创新是政府 不可推卸的责任
So finally, I want to conclude by showing you the profile of one company, IBM. As many of you know, IBM has always been considered for the last hundred years to be one of the most innovative companies. In fact, if you look at the number of patents filed over history, I think they are in the top or the top two or three companies in the world of all patents filed in the USA as a private company.
最后,我希望通过 IBM公司的情况来总结 很多人都知道,IBM一直是 在过去一个世纪以来 最具创新意识的公司之一 实际上,如果翻看专利申请数量的历史 我想他们是位居榜首或前几名的 专利申请公司,在美国的私人企业当中
Here is the profile of employees of IBM over the last decade. In 2003, they had 300,000 employees, or 330,000 employees, out of which, 135,000 were in America, 9,000 were in India. In 2009, they had 400,000 employees, by which time the U.S. employees had moved to 105,000, whereas the Indian employees had gone to 100,000.
这个是该公司 过去十年的员工构成表 2003年,他们有30万名员工 或者说33万员工里面13.5万 在美国9千在印度 到2009年 他们有40万名员工 此时 美国的员工数字变为10.5万 而印度的数字则升到10万
Well, in 2010, they decided they're not going to reveal this data anymore, so I had to make some estimates based on various sources. Here are my best guesses. Okay? I'm not saying this is the exact number, it's my best guess. It gives you a sense of the trend. There are 433,000 people now at IBM, out of which 98,000 are remaining in the U.S., and 150,000 are in India. So you tell me, is IBM an American company, or an Indian company? (Laughter)
到2010年他们决定不再公布 这个统计,所以我自己做了点估算 在各种数据的基础上 这是我能做的最佳估算。这并不是 确切的数字 而是我的最佳估算 让你能感知发展趋势 现在IBM有43.3万名员工 其中 9.8万仍在美国 而15万在印度 请你告诉我,IBM是一家美国公司 还是印度公司(笑声)
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. (Applause)
女士们先生们 谢谢各位(掌声)