Lion and Gazelle

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle and a lion wake up with these thoughts. Gazelle knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion to survive. Lion knows that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle to get its meal and survive."

I think this quote was from Tom Friedman's latest best seller 'World is Flat'.

I think this quote sends out a clear message about the realities and strategies required to deal with off shoring.

To keep ones job in the developed world, one has to be better than the best in the place where jobs are going to. However, in developing world, in order to steal a job from the developed world, they just need to be better than the most incompetent one here. Cruel but hard truth. Globalization which is based on capitalism is ruthless. It is based on use and throw. It might be short sighted but that's how it works. Workers in the developed countries have sort a become gazelles requiring to run faster than the fastest lion and workers in the developing countries due to cost differential have become lions requiring to run only faster than the slowest gazelle. For gazelles, running faster than the slowest gazelle also works because the slowest will be caught by the lion. But, law of averages works slowly but certainly and every gazelle will become the slowest at one point or another.

Cheers!

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