The amount of money spend on Research and Development in American companies is amazing. The results are obvious. Majority of the inventions and patents in the last century are from US.
If developing countries like India have to progress they have to shift to R & D and
Manufacturing.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=414228
India shifts into R&D
Posted: April 8, 2006
Bangalore, India - If you need a barometer on where India is headed, just follow General Electric’s lead.
The United States’ largest conglomerate is adding a fourth phase to its global research and development campus just outside Bangalore - “The IT City.” Its John F. Welch Technology Center in the suburb of Whitehead already encompasses three thoroughly modern facilities with a total of 500,000 square feet.
Phase four will add another 150,000 square feet, filling about half of the 50-acre wonderland.
The R&D operation kicked off in 1999 and already employs a stated 2,200 technologists, though the real number is probably higher. Projections are for 2,750 employees within a couple years.
The lesson for the U.S. and Wisconsin about India is that it has moved far past call centers and low-paying jobs. It has moved, as the GE technology facility shows, into high-end research. Some 20% of the Indian researchers hold PhDs.
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About one-fifth of the technologists work for global R&D, which serves all the GE groups. The rest are units within the groups. A big chunk of the operation is a unit of GE Healthcare, which employs thousands in Waukesha.
Depending on how you look at it, the Milwaukee area, which is trying to beef up R&D, either faces competition from India or is helped by the boost the GE researchers give to GE Healthcare.
Multinationals can hire a young engineer here for about one-fourth of the wages in the U.S.
The beautifully landscaped GE campus offers a perfect example of the stark contrasts that are the hallmark of India.
GE’s technology center pampers the researchers, much as Mike Cudahy used to do at the Cozzens & Cudahy Research Center of the former Marquette Electronics. There is an open-air restaurant, an amphitheater for cultural events, an on-site travel agency that books lots of round-trips to Wisconsin, a shopping area, an art collection in the office, and an elaborate exercise room. It’s an almost idyllic place to work.
Yet, the road leading to the campus is littered with garbage, potholed and congested to the point where a certain fatalism about accidents is the only coping mechanism. Cows wander among beeping cars and careening, tri-wheeled taxis.
A new airport, a ring road, and a transit system are slowly being constructed, but not nearly fast enough to accommodate this boom city’s growth.
Imagine planning for a city that grew from 2 million 10 years ago to about 6.5 million today. Historic parts of the city have been scrapped to make way for progress, prompting a new preservationist movement that seeks to keep the treasures intact.
As one Indian businessman commented, “With thousands of years of history, India has an oversupply of temples and historic places.” Thus the cavalier disregard for many sites.
Nonetheless, the contrast between old Bangalore and modern Bangalore is staggering.
The city boasts a half-dozen shopping malls that are easily the match for Milwaukee’s renovated malls like Mayfair and Bayshore. With land prices soaring - an industrial acre goes for $1 million - the malls reach as high as seven stories. This is where the growing middle class shops.
Most of the population shops at some of the shabbiest of retail cubbyholes. Miles of these low-end shops line every highway.
Schools vary from bare public facilities to lovely private schools on pretty campuses.
Largely pacifist, India has one of the world’s largest armies.
Most women here wear the traditional saris, even to work, but the women in the IT complexes dress in MTV-style outfits.
The stark contrasts between Third World infrastructure and historic Bangalore aside, the major assessment has to be that the Bangalore boom is far from over.
As evidence: The Welch Center has filed for 300 patents in its seven years of existence, with 40 issued. But 100 of the filings came just last year.
The acceleration is obvious.
John Torinus is chief executive officer of Serigraph Inc. of West Bend. Contact him at [email protected].