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

Probably a repost, but this excellent video talks about the problems with outsourcing everything (i.e. the L J Hart-Smith report) ▶ this 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.

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: ▶ this 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.

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: ▶ this 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.

OP, you will likely be interested in this talk by Bert Hubert: How Tech Loses Out over at Companies, Countries and Continents: On how companies lose deep knowledge and stop innovating link As a video: ▶ this video

There is an article and talk about this general process of losing technical leadership here: link ▶ this video and here is one about the EU & 5G outsourcing: link