Jim's Blog

Brother Blankenhorn posts a piece on a South African Linuxe entrepreneur talking about Open Source and how the nature of that model supports creation of local jobs.

Amen.  Get an education, find a nice place to raise a family, any where, plug in, and go to work.  All you need besides broadband is the willingness to learn, the skill to manage, and the desire to innovate.

Leaming, Managing, Innovating – that is what this century requires. 

Here, in a concise nutshell found in Tom Friedman's column today, is how the economy will work this century:

Mr. Raju said: "We told ourselves: if business process outsourcing can be done from cities in India to support cities in the developed world, why can't it be done by villages in India to support cities in India. … Things like processing employee records can be done from anywhere, so there is no reason it can't be done from a village." Satyam began with two villages a year ago and plans to scale up to 150.

There is enough bandwidth now, even reaching big Indian villages, to parcel out this work, and the villagers are very eager. "The attrition level is low, and the commitment levels high," Mr. Raju said. "It is a way of breathing economic life into villages." It gives educated villagers a chance to stay on the land, he said, and not have to migrate to the cities.

Any town, any place with bandwidth can play — but, you have got to have the knowledge workers to do it…

Of course, you also have to change the model for intellectualy property management.  Dana Blankenhorn nails it in his column defining Open Source:

Think about it. You make more money sharing your knowledge than trying to control it. You deliver more value, you sell more equipment, you earn more money through support and infrastructure, if you end your obsession with "Intellectual Property".

Postscript : Friedman's column talks about Google Finance – (which I posted a couple a months ago) as an idea conceived and executed by Indians.