A Bailout Made of Sand – And The Dawn of Global Sourcing

By

David T Kinnear

President & CEO, Lisnagol Ventures & Co-Founder of The BPO Council

 

Good intentions notwithstanding, this “rescue plan” has been built on some really shaky foundations and a very false premise. And what is that? It is the false premise of “getting things back to normal”.

People, “normal” has gone. “Normal” was last seen disappearing over the equator during the last decade.

The world may be flat – but it is also very competitive, very independent – yet strangely interdependent. These are fascinating, exciting – and yet also combustible elements. We’re now in an era of doing experiments in the global lab with these elements and noone really knows what the outcome could – or should – be.

Years ago, bad news took a long time to travel from distant lands. Equally, bad mistakes could be ‘lost’ in distant places and markets. Not so now. Sooner or later we find out that the world is only so big – and that our mistakes will haunt us. Maybe that story they used to tell about the butterfly fluttering its wings in Tokyo wasn’t so fanciful after all?

The dawn of global sourcing is now upon us. This is not just trite talk and terminology. It is very real and very timely. It has massive economic and socio-economic implications – all of which defy the idea of just getting things back to normal. We would be better served understanding and preparing for the new normal. This is the global economy in which we will compete, survive and flourish – or fail.

This is not a partisan issue. It is way bigger than party politics and it’s bigger than just the temporary inequity of the recent bailout measures that protect a relative few – and cost the majority dearly. The stakes are really much higher for all of us and the following generations we seek to foster and protect.

The true cost will be that we bear for generations to come – if we do not engage the new reality, the new normal – and invest the time and resources to equip our people and following generations for this environment.

Global Sourcing is here. We ignore this shift at our peril.

 

David Kinnear

New York