(2004-03-09) Dick Cook Jobs

Jon Udell interviews MAPICS CEO Dick Cook on the Jobless Recovery, Off Shoring, China and India. Dick’s a pragmatic guy who outsources to India, and likely will outsource to China too, because he thinks doing otherwise would be noncompetitive. He’s not deaf to the siren song of protectionism, but would rather focus on ways to stimulate American innovation and competitiveness, and he’s compiled a list of strategies: Do more to foster math, science, and technical education. “Other countries are catching up in terms of education and skill, and we all want to ignore that,” Cook says. Make it easier for foreign nationals who earn advanced technical degrees in the United States to live and work here. “There should be a fast track to a green card, so we keep more of those highly educated people in the country,” he explains.

It doesn't necessarily mean we're moving jobs offshore, it means we're working more efficiently. Me and MAPICS (an ERP package) are probably one reason for that. People pay a lot of money for our software to be a cause of that.