The niche cities reflect China's ability to form "lump" economies, where clusters or networks of businesses feed off each other, building technologies and enjoying the benefits of concentrated support centers -- like the button capital nearby, which furnishes most of the buttons on the world's shirts, pants and jackets.

Just wait until they focus on software. You'll have AntiVirus Village, Middleware Mountain, Browserborough, and more. (Microsoft Research already has a major presence in China.) Or, even more specialized ... a city for device drivers, one for user interfaces, another for kernel hackers, and still another for databases.

In the next few years, once all the limits are lifted, China's share of the US apparel market could soar to 50 percent to 70 percent.

With those numbers, you can't blame it all on Wal-Mart.

Sweaters Are West of Socks City

Feel my pain.

Millions of employees must write more frequently on the job than previously. And many are making a hash of it.

A recent survey of 120 American corporations concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly.

"Clarity is critical."

"Considering how highly educated our people are, many can't write clearly in their day-to-day work."

"I was too wordy," Morrison said. "I liked long, convoluted passages rather than simple four-word sentences."

"Instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen."

If only it were true! Just 1 in 3 write poorly? Oh, that would be great. I could really work with that.

What corporate America can't build: a sentence

A: You don't. You hire good people who will challenge each other every day to make the best products possible. That's why you don't see any big posters on the walls around here, stating our mission statement. Our corporate culture is simple.

Voices Of Innovation: Steve Jobs

skullaria wrote:
] Indians are combing US job boards obviously looking for US jobs.
]
] Now exactly what about that is NOT competition?

Daniel Drezner has his points. He has a blog. Direct questions to him at his blog.

My point is not that outsourcing does not exist nor that it has a negligible effect on American lives. It does exist and its effects are real and significant, both in the US and around the world.

My point is that advocating reactionary strategies and policies is doomed to failure, especially in the long run if not even in the short run. In attempting to shield the US, you are not propping it up. You are drowning it. For every moment the US delays, hoping for a political bail-out that allows it to reject change and maintain the statuo quo, the US stands idly by while the other 95% of the world scrambles to overtake them. A growing number of nations are already ahead of the US in education, and now they're extending their lead.

The world is a tough place. Go read your Darwin. Cowboy up!

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

No one said anything about a job.

RE: The Balance Sheet on Outsourcing

Times readers respond (rather quite predictibly) to Daniel Drezner's recent op-ed on outsourcing.

These people are in such denial!

The gang's all here, as if on public display. You have the lame, out-of-work ex-programmer who spent money on a "master's degree" in IT. (Yeah, that's right.) You have the Labor economist, the flag-waving DIYers, and the counter-corporeals. All that's missing is the foreign commentator who decries the new social divisions brought about by the influx of Western work to the developing country.

The Balance Sheet on Outsourcing

Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in Mexico, and the company has built a new 72,000 square foot superstore in the shadow of the Pyramids of Teotihuacán on farmland supposedly protected under Mexican law as an archaeological site.

This was a truly beautiful site, and it's a shame to see it used this way. Something significant has been lost when you climb all the way to the summit of the Pyramid of the Sun, only to find yourself staring down at a Wal-Mart parking lot.

No, the Conquistadors Are Not Back. It's Just Wal-Mart.

Of the 1.5 million jobs lost last year in "mass layoffs", less than 1 percent were attributed to overseas relocation. Technological innovation is responsible for a far greater number of lost jobs than outsourcing.

Where Did All the Jobs Go? Nowhere

The reality is becoming clear because of Iraq, but Iraq was not the cause, and diplomacy will not make it go away.

High Oil Prices May Not Be Temporary

The goal of this series is to acquaint readers with the most important nontechnical skills that every engineer needs to be more effective in the workplace and happier in life.

Be sure to check out the entire series at

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers

Stuff You Don't Learn In Engineering School

"Consumers are getting harder to influence as commercial clutter invades their lives," says a recent report by Deutsche Bank.

Factoid: Procter & Gamble is the biggest advertiser in the world.

The future of advertising | Economist