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 technical skill set is highly efficient can idea generation and breakthrough differentiation happen.
In business, a strong idea does not get monetised without technical skill set. And devoid of differentiation, the product or service easily gets 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 since about the 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. Continuity in honing technical skill sets has allowed Germany to maintain high quality manufacturing even as it went through the 21st century?s recessionary times with the rest of the world.
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. Let?s go into the 10th century where exceptionally high technical and artistic skill set was displayed at Khajuraho, among others. In every square feet you can see meticulously crafted design elaborately executed with passion and harmony in replicating a theme. Where has that generation?s 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 the nuclear implosion, defeat and obliteration of its economy, landscape and self esteem after World War II. 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 world?s most recognised in terms of quality and user-friendly miniaturisation of industrial products.
China?s superb technical skill set for production has been unquestionably proven since the sixth century Tang dynasty. China is currently the world?s biggest manufacturing hub in spite of setbacks when politically establishing Communist ideology. When I visited a state-of-the-art factory for productionising an industrial design, I enquired 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 having ?Made in China? written behind it. If there really was quality deficiency, neither Apple nor customers would have accepted it. Reverting to their superior technical skill set from ancient times to today?s 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 techo-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. 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. I?ve 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 marriageable value was crumbling as he was not managing too many people, so was not recognised to be holding any 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 country?s engineers are getting drained to enter the business area and for body shopping. 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 or opinion leader of football if your score in 5,390 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. Absorbing this football metaphor, 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, elevated designations and better social recognition. It?s 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 http://www.shiningconsulting.com