Opinion Fractured technical skill set
Idea generation supported by advanced technical skill set creates differentiation excellence for a product or service....
Idea generation supported by advanced technical skill set creates differentiation excellence for a product or service. This provides tremendous returns to an industry and its future,and gets recognised,sustains,and acquires brand worth. Only when a technical skill set is highly efficient,can idea generation and breakthrough differentiation happen.
In business,a strong idea does not get monetised without a technical skill set. And devoid of differentiation,the product gets easily imitated or falls into the commodity zone. A simple example is how the UK,renowned Industrial Revolution pioneers,lost its monopoly in the generation of ideas and technical skill set when it chose to de-link from manufacturing industries and enter the financial engineering domain sometime after 1980s. The country consequently suffered tremendous economic downturn with negligible industrial manufacturing to fall back upon. In contrast,Germany retained its industrial strength and sprang back after its total destruction in the Second World War.
In ancient history,India,China and Japan had multifaceted technical skill sets in different technology aspects of those times. In subsequent political turmoil,many of these were lost. China and Japan have since developed contemporary technical skill sets,whereas India is yet to manifest how to regain our legendary technical skill sets. Lets go into the 10th century where exceptionally high technical and artistic skill set was displayed at Khajuraho. Where has that generations incomparable technical skill set gene gone? The majority of technical skill set graduates today dream of the IT industry only,irrespective of their domain knowledge being mechanical,electronics or electrical engineering. So industries like automobiles and electronics are suffering a technical skill set shortfall.
Japan bounced back post nuclear implosion,defeat and obliteration of its economy after the Great War. Japan may not have generated exceptional fundamental new ideas in industrial products the way Western Europe or North America has done,but extreme technical skill set makes Japan among the worlds most recognised in terms of quality and user-friendly miniaturisation of industrial products.
Chinas superb technical skill set for production has been unquestionably proven since the 6th century Tang dynasty. China is currently the worlds biggest manufacturing hub. When I visited a state-of-the-art factory for productionising an industrial design,I asked why China had a reputation for bad quality. The factory manager explained that China maintains a four-pronged quality and price system for the same product to get faster return on investment. Everyone goes to China for cost reduction,so China delivers on customer demand as per customer price. He cited the example of iPods that have the Made in China mark on them. If there really was quality deficiency,neither Apple nor the customers would have accepted it. Reverting to their superior technical skill set from ancient times to todays digital era,China is fast overcoming quality scarcity even for low priced products.
Technical skill set excellence is the most important value that leads an enterprise to idea generation and differentiation capability. But Indian industry does not prize the technical skill set,so in turn,society does not glorify the tech-savvy professional. I have seen when techno-skilled professional NRIs return to India they abandon their superior technical skill set area to get into management and business. Actually the system compels them to bypass their technical stream. These techno-professionals do not rise in reputation nor do they become recognised leaders in their technical skill set. Work involving technical skill set per se is not perceived to be high category jobs in India. Unless they become business managers with financial targets,techno-professionals do not get high remuneration either. And society judges career growth by the large numbers of people that a manager supervises over,so the technical professional with fewer reportees loses out here as well. As climbing the technical ladder will not bring him reverence,but only stagnation,he willy-nilly acquires managerial skill. This is the way we kill our technical skill set; subsequently idea generation and differentiation are lost.
The combined mentality of the Indian employer,employee and society is responsible for killing this technical skill set. Ive heard of an IT engineer who was being paid significantly more to stay on in the technical stream but he pleaded to be shifted to a managerial role. He said his parents were about to arrange his marriage,but his marriage value was crumbling as he was not managing too many people and so he didnt appear to be occupying a top-notch position.
Most Indian IT companies neglect the technical skill set. This hampers their going up the value chain to develop products,productised services or provide high-end technology consultancy to clients. All our countrys engineers are getting drained to enter the business area. Not experiencing the technology prowess of young techno-savvy Indians,the Western world thinks India is only good for very basic IT coding for routine customer requirement. Indian IT engineers may have quickly got rich,but there will always remain a gap in their technical skill set competency.
The technical skill set of an industry is exactly like that of a football player. You cannot be a famous footballer if your score in 5390 square metres within 90 minutes is not very high. This is the skill set. People can handle football clubs or football merchandise,but without the skill set of football players on the ground,football tournaments cannot exist. So,India needs to have the passion to invest in and build technical skill sets in every domain.
Every industry has its specific technical skill set that needs to be sharpened and encouraged with high rewards. Its about time Indian industries paid attention to developing their employees technical skill set at every level so that individual football players in whatever position they are playing in is able to excel at the company job. Instead of migrating people to business areas,raising technical skill set excellence will lead the enterprise to superior idea generation and differentiation to command the global market with,and be sustainable there.
Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management. Reach him at
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