How technology loses out in companies, countries & continents and what to do about it

What people said

textlapse · 2024-06 · Strong recommendation

Probably a repost, but this excellent video talks about the problems with outsourcing everything (i.e. the L J Hart-Smith report) [VIDEO] - the report itself is fairly accessible and an eye-opener on what happens when you outsource all of your core competency. The only remaining thing is a weak 'systems integrator'. And the best part is the suppliers have more leverage and less compliance/liability than you do! Because nobody even knows their name.

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scrollaway · 2022-08 · Strong recommendation

I quite like Jonathan Blow. I think this talk is kind of poor though, I remember watching it a couple of years ago in its full context (linked in the youtube description: [LINK] ). IIRC it had a bit of a "kids these days" / "they don't make 'em like they used to" feel to it. It's not untrue , but it doesn't really explain anything. IMO, a MUCH BETTER version of a similar point was outlined by Bert Hubert in this article: [LINK] - How Tech Loses Out over at Companies, Countries and Continents (Video version: [VIDEO] ) In short, this goes beyond software; it's in general about why the incentives around specialization and outsourcing/offshoring cause innovation and expertise to die out. Bert Hubert takes the example of toasters, but it's of course very generalizable: > The problem is that this is not just a toaster problem. This is a continental problem. All over Europe, this is happening simultaneously, where we’re saying, look, we’re not that much into actually building things anymore. > So we’re just getting everyone else to build stuff for us. [...] We’re just thinking about things and then telling some other people how to do their stuff. > In the end, you cannot survive if all you create is intellectual property.

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scrollaway · 2022-08 · Strong recommendation

I quite like Jonathan Blow. I think the talk mentioned in this post is kind of poor though, I remember watching it a couple of years ago in its full context ( [LINK] ). IIRC it had a bit of a "kids these days" / "they don't make 'em like they used to" feel to it. It's not untrue, but it doesn't really explain anything. IMO, a MUCH BETTER version of a similar point was outlined by Bert Hubert in this article: [LINK] - How Tech Loses Out over at Companies, Countries and Continents (Video version: [VIDEO] ) In short, this goes beyond software; it's in general about why the incentives around specialization and outsourcing/offshoring cause innovation and expertise to die out. Bert Hubert takes the example of toasters, but it's of course very generalizable: > The problem is that this is not just a toaster problem. This is a continental problem. All over Europe, this is happening simultaneously, where we’re saying, look, we’re not that much into actually building things anymore. > So we’re just getting everyone else to build stuff for us. [...] We’re just thinking about things and then telling some other people how to do their stuff. > In the end, you cannot survive if all you create is intellectual property.

Read the original HN comment ↗