“Stop thinking like an Indian” or why is Europe losing the tech race to Asia
A true story that shows how european tech companies are still living in the 20th century.
A few years ago, I was working as a consultant for a european tech company and one of our suppliers was an indian software firm. We worked together on several projects and we were quite satisfied with the quality of their delivrables.
And one day, during a technical meeting with this supplier, my manager (who was not the smartest kid on the block) suddenly said to one of his own developers: “Stop thinking like an Indian.”.
That was followed by a long silence in the room, then the supplier representative said “We are done here”.
The manager tried to apologize and explain that he did not mean it but it was too late.
I was shocked at the moment but not surprised. I knew that this guy and some other senior employees in that company think that way. They believe that europe is the center of the world, that China is still making cheap copies of known brands and that India is still a poor developing country.
They believe that europe is the center of the world, that China is still making cheap copies of known brands and that India is still a poor developing country.
We could even feel these clichés in his way of treating the team members who were from other counties. In fact, that was applicable to the whole company, only locals were trusted for responsibility positions. And by locals I don’t mean people from the same country, I mean people from the same region within the country.
Why did I bring up this story here? It’s because I believe that this arrogance is one of the many reasons why Europe is losing, or already lost, the tech race to Asia and USA.
A few decades ago, Europe used to have some of the finest technology products, but if you look at the biggest players today, you’ll only find the american giants and the fast growing asian ones.
Europe, the old continent, is getting older but not bigger.
America on the other hand, was able to follow the fast growth of the asian tech industry and even to take advantage of it. But how?
Can you guess what do the CEO of IBM Arvind Krishna, the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella and the CEO of Adobe Shantanu Narayen have in common? That’s right, they are all from India.
Now, can you guess who, between Asia and Europe, has more engineering and technology universities in the 2020 world’s top 100? Europe has 26, Asia has 37.
Where American companies saw the development of asian industry as an opportunity and started creating huge R&D centers in Asia, worked hard to enter the local market and get a big slice of the asian customers cake and gave their best employees high positions, Europe continues to look down on Asia and believe in the illusion of it’s superiority.
As a result, former market leader european companies are struggling to survive, some of them were bought by big chinese groups, some are fading away due to the fierce competition: Asia is not only making cheaper products, but they are also better now ! Higher quality for lower price, checkmate!
Truth is, Asian countries today and especially India, don’t only have a huge number of engineers compared to the rest of the world, they are also better educated and more skilled than the average.
In addition to that, salaries and work conditions became very competitive, most of the indian colleagues I had did not come to Europe for money, some of them had even better salaries back home. And the food tasted better!
Remember that “Stop thinking like an Indian” story in the introduction? Funniest thing happened: the company decided to stop working with the indian supplier to switch to a european one, with the exact same expertise (This is important) but “a closer mindset”.
It was an East-Europe company so a bit cheaper than local companies, but 30% more expensive than the indian one.
Later we discovered that this company was outsourcing the work to the exact same indian company we stopped working with.
