Tata & Infosys manage talent crunch

TCS and Infy step efforts to manage talent crunch (Silicon India, November 6)
Top software services firms of India, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies are keen on acquisitions to boost their manpower, but are cautious of very large targets. TCS was keen on acquiring new potentials, "We have to acquire capabilities we don't have, that's our strategy," says S. Padmanabhan, Head of Global Human Resources, TCS.

India firms to enhance China's BPO skills

Indian firms to enhance China's BPO skills (Silicon India, November 8)
Two Indian firms signed an initial pact with a Chinese industry body to train Chinese students in skills required in the booming outsourcing sector. To enhance the level of certification and training required for the BPO industry, China-based Xi'an Service Outsourcing Development Association signed a MoU with Starting Point Competence Training and Snam Abrasive. The MoU, signed at the Xian-Bangalore Service Outsourcing conference, stressed on joint efforts to encourage, stimulate and formulate competency developmental activities. This would favor the BPO industry in Xi'an. The city in western China is referred to as the capital of that country's BPO industry.

The Changing Face of American Innovation

An interview with William Kerr in Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge: The Changing Face of American Innovation

The contributions made by immigrant scientists and engineers for developing new U.S. technologies have been formidable—but not always well described.

What we do know: While the foreign-born account for just over 10 percent of the U.S. working population, they represent 25 percent of the U.S. science and engineering workforce and nearly 50 percent of those with science and engineering doctorates. And at the Ph.D. level, ethnic researchers make an exceptional contribution to science as measured by Nobel Prizes, election to the National Academy of Sciences, patent citation counts, and so on.

Now new research based on patent and trademark data by Harvard Business School professor William Kerr drills down to further identify the probable ethnic composition of U.S. inventors, the industries they influence, and the geographies they work in.

But the paper, "The Ethnic Composition of U.S. Inventors," also documents a significant transformation in ethnic composition of U.S. scientists and engineers over the last 30 years, as Chinese and Indian inventors grew in importance as drivers of U.S. innovation...