My Good Ideas are Making Others Rich

I have had some good ideas in my time. The biggest problems with my ideas is that they are too technical for me. They are ideas that I don't have the skills to implement but I know that they are good ideas and would be really successful. Let take, for example, a new product by Google. Google recently announced a service called My Location that can locate mobile users of Google Maps without GPS. This is done by using information gathered from the cell tower in which our mobile device is communicating with to calculate your approximate location. This is ingenious and it was an idea that I had years ago.

I thought that I could implement this type of solution on BYU campus and create a person/item/inventory/whatever you want to keep track of locater. I just didn't have the skills to implement it and Google did. So they get all the glory. This has made me contemplate what I can do about the situation. I see two options. One is to try to patent these good ideas and sell them to people who can actually do them. The other option is to do nothing and just enjoy these innovations when they come out. Either way, I feel a little sense of gratification when I see that Google had the same idea I had.

How My World Was Flattened

A few weeks ago I was in the Denver airport with a handful of people that I had never met. They were college students from all over the country who, for the next two and a half days, had the same goal: to impress our hosts enough that they would want to hire us as employees for their company. As we were meeting new people, mingling, and trying to look like we had adequate social skills I was asked an interesting question after announcing that my major was IT. This student asked how I felt that all of my jobs were being sent out to China and India and how I expected to keep a job. I was shocked by the question. The goal of my education was to create myself in to such a desirable product that some great company would invest heavily in harvesting and honing my skills. But this student suggested that all I had done up to that point might be worth less than I expected, perhaps it was cheaper to entrust my job with someone in India or China.

I didn't quite know how to answer so I snickered while trying to hide a sudden concern for my career and said hey, I'm not worried, it's not like I'm going for a call center job or something. But deep down I wondered if he might be right. Is my job in danger of being outsourced or offshored?

Fortunately I was not doomed to wear such bleakly tinted glasses for long. I did not know much about offshoring and outsourcing but as I read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman I began to learn more and more of what it means to me. So armed with much more knowledge I can answer that question I was asked in Denver.

No, I am not afraid of my job being given to the highly skilled Indian or Chinese worker. It is true that these international workers can do many jobs that we do, but cheaper. Companies are seeing this and they are investing in this workforce. But that doesn't mean that they will fire me. On the contrary, they will need me even more. That is because those extra workers are increasing our productivity, output and changing the market. As they do that work from a distance there is so much more for us to do here at the home front. They are creating more work for me to do.

But this is not all. You might still wonder why a company would keep me around to do what the cheap labor is doing. The thing is I wont be doing what they can do anymore. As they pump out all of this work, I will be growing and adapting to the change they are making in the market. I will no longer be doing the same thing that they are doing. I feel that one of my biggest strengths is that I am able to learn. I have used my time in college to learn how to learn. I am very good at learning new things as obstacles are placed in my way. I am adaptable and can shift in this dynamic market.

As the world flattens and markets shift, new opportunities arise. Industries exist now that never would have been imagined ten or fifteen years ago. I will be in the middle of this continual change and growth and will have all of the benefits of the flat world at my disposal. I am not afraid of my job being given to cheap laborers in 3rd world countries. I am eager to take the reins of these new markets. So as we outsource, my opportunities will only grow, as long as I grow with them.

That is what Thomas Friedman taught me about my job. This is what I look forward to as a graduate with a degree in Information Technology. This is why I am not afraid of my career being outsourced.

A New Business Model for Watching TV

For some reason the media industry is always resistant to change. When radio stations began broadcasting music the industry feared people would no longer go to concerts. When VCRs and video tapes were released the movie industry thought that it would kill the movie theater business and ruin the industry. When music became digitalized and people were sharing their music with their long distance neighbors the recording industry thought that soon, no one would purchase music. But their fears were unfounded. Radio brought music to everyone, VCRs made classics out of blockbusters and paved a new road for revenue and digitalized music opened new paths for distribution and helped the new and independent artists find a presence.

Now there is new change. Media is continuing to digitize and people are turning to the internet to watch their favorite TV shows. Initially people began to share TV shows that had been downloaded, commercial free and crystal clear. TV studios feared lost revenue. But this change, like the previous, is here to stay. The TV industry simply needs to find their business model. Already we are seeing networks trying to build this new model. Everyone needs to follow suit and embrace this channel. Instead of driving people to download commercial free versions of their TV shows offer them an easy and high quality avenue. A place with ads that you can not skip, and perhaps even require you to click to acknowledge. Networks, the digital revolution is not going away. Embrace it and mold it in to the model that works for all of us. Otherwise you will simply be blowing off a lot of hot air and not making any money from it.