A mouth to feed, or a couple of hands that can work ...

For some times, some of us felt that the ever increasing Indian population is a cause of concern. I agree to an extent only, probably, the current Indian economic growth is attributed those huge number of young people.

In the same lines, I was thinking about the recent "right sizing discussions" going on in Indian IT companies. I was scratching my head on what can be done &%$#("? While I was reading through news articles ..., blogs ..., comments ..., and everything related to the topic on the internet, an idea popped up. If we start thinking postively that we have a couple of hands to work, rather than a mouth to feed idea, we may be able to weather this storm to some extent.


Now how does this apply to the current scenario.

Indian "IT services" companies have enough experience working on next generation technologies. We have mostly worked for the innovators, and little did we try to innovate something for ourselves. To give some more idea ...

The new age of computers is around the corners,
- RF ID technology is going to change the way we do shopping
- Interactive user interfaces will change the way we give commands to computers
- USB 3.0, is going to the change the way the computer CPU will look like
- Cloud computing is taking off, with google's online documents
- Power hungry worlds, wants to save every milli-watt they can
- Hybrid engines and technology changing the way automobiles operate
(this list is very big...)

Now, in all these, there may not be a major market immediately, but ...
Since we now have enough talented engineers to work, and more and more moving to free pool ...
* Can we start creating IP (Intellectual Properties) for future use, say USB3.0 IP?
* Is it possible that our engineers can innovate the next generation UI?
* Is it possible, that we create all software libraries for an 100% RFID based super market, from Hardware to DBMS?

In doing all the above things, we may not have earned a lot of money now, but, the IP are potential revenue spinners. The IP's may find use, when the market picks up.

Is it possible to show some market value for IP's?
Can we show them as our assets?
If the answer to the above questions are yes, then does it mean, we are saving money?
Is it a smart cost cutting?

One another method that WIPRO seems to be aggresively following is training all the free force.
I think, that is one another way of increasing the company's potential to take on the market when it picks up.

If only the management thinks that this may to be a smart way of thinking,
many talents will get a chance to innovate, for our own company.