When India Kicked Out Coca-Cola, Local Sodas Thrived – But it can also happen with software too…
It's always interesting (frustrating) to me to see how an organisation starts to buy an outsider service (the latest hype one is a cloud service) and then becomes even more dependent on it over time as they let their internal skilled resources shrivel and die. Don't think external service providers don't know this as their first prize is to feed your dependence and then secure your lock-in… It's then very difficult to switch providers or pull the service back internally as now you don't really have those skills internally to take it over or to even successfully judge the external provider.
You end up then with your local service providers just marking up a foreign service and dropping the boxes off. There are lots of disguises in the form of digital villages, skills transfers, etc but when you are paying double or triple and getting a token 15% back who is being fooled?
To quote an unsavoury part of South Africa's own past it was isolated through sanctions during the Apartheid years and its defence force allowed local industries to innovate and thrive. I'm certainly not promoting going back to that era but it is interesting what effect it has on a local industry to push all the investment their way and let them innovate with it. The money is now 100% directed at local manufacturing and jobs.
Instead in South Africa, we've been seeing our software innovation around Ubuntu Linux and Elon Musk's Zip2 being snapped up overseas. I suppose you have to decide at a fundamental level as a country/organisation whether you want to be a net consumer or producer…If you remain a consumer you will be dependent and have to continue paying someone else whatever you are charged. But the slogan "Nobody Gets Fired For Buying IBM" still seems to ring true…
See the Indian soda story though at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-thums-up
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When India Kicked Out Coca-Cola, Local Sodas Thrived – Gastro Obscura Some still reign today. |