How to Survive Offshore Outsourcing and Thrive

This has been a such hot topic and emotional charged issue and here are my thoughts:

As we enter into a global economy, corporations are taking advantage of the low cost of living and highly educated workforce in India and China, offshore outsourcing is inevitable and will become a matte of life. We can't fight it. So how can we compete with people who are living happily on one tenth of what we are making there? Good question. The answer is that we can not compete on the price, nor can we compete on the argument of the qualify of software product. To compete on the price is like committing suicide and to argue on the latter is pointless, because software quality is very hard to define and most times good enough quality is acceptable. Then how do we compete?

We must compete our strength, not our weakness. We must compete on what this country is good at, to innovate and to be creative. Let the offshore outsourcers do the grunt implementation work and this will free us to do the most innovative and creative work. The one we lose our innovation is the day we lose our job!

So what kind of jobs will NOT be outsourced?

The kind of jobs requires more than just the "coding" skills, like being able to effectively communicate and understand customer's pain and requirement, like being able to remove a hurdle so that your sales team could close a few more deals, like use integration technology to tie all disparate systems together so your senior could have real time access to your sales data and inventory.

In other words, one must transform himself into a business person with IT skills. One must take a deep interest in his company's business and business process.