http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_28/b4186048358596.htm
NOTE: he is suggesting that there should be better leadership and partnership from the federal government in scaling (manufacturing) operations of US businesses. This would yield more US jobs instead of ceding them overseas. Realize that this is from a man who fled communist Hungary in 1956. Grove is not a doctrinaire person constrained by 'labels' but a true rational person, an engineer, a scientist, a technogeek, among my favorite kind of people, who work to solve problems.
I recall learning somewhere in this forum that none of OUR recent stimulus money that was earmarked for green windmill technology went to US firms, but went to german and china firms. Reason: there were and are no US firms manufacturing the windmills. I suspect this is so because it would be far too costly for a US firm to do this alone. Further, I suspect german and chinese firms get subsidies from their respective gov'ts to make this endevour work economically.
The former Intel chief says "job-centric" leadership and incentives are needed to expand U.S. domestic employment again
Robyn TwomeyBy Andy Grove
This Issue
July 5, 2010Recently an acquaintance at the next table in a Palo Alto (Calif.) restaurant introduced me to his companions, three young venture capitalists from China. They explained, with visible excitement, that they were touring promising companies in Silicon Valley. I've lived in the Valley a long time, and usually when I see how the region has become such a draw for global investments, I feel a little proud.
Not this time. I left the restaurant unsettled. Something did not add up. Bay Area unemployment is even higher than the 9.7 percent national average. Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn't been creating many jobs of late—unless you're counting Asia, where American tech companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.
The underlying problem isn't simply lower Asian costs. It's our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs. Americans love the idea of the guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently encapsulated this view in a piece called "Start-Ups, Not Bailouts." His argument: Let tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die if they have to. If Washington really wants to create jobs, he wrote, it should back startups.
Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.
The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that's the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.
What Went Wrong?
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