On September 17 of this year, as part of Innovation Week, I participated in a panel devoted to the interconnection between software development outsourcing and innovation. The panel started with the following (roughly summarized) question: “Can you outsource innovation?”
My personal take on this (again, if summarized in three words) is, “Yes, you can.” Before you start protesting, let me explain what I mean. You obviously can’t outsource generating the next big idea—it doesn’t work like that. It should be an idea that you trust unconditionally and are passionate about to invest your time and money into turning it into a reality. Sending an RFP for idea generation to <insert your offshore location of preference> and then selecting the best provider doesn’t lead to that level of trust and passion.
But, as many have said, “Ideas are cheap; execution is everything.” Once you have an innovative idea, what you can outsource is that crucial part: execution. Many companies do precisely that. I can’t provide any statistics, but my gut feeling, based on our own corporate experience, is that many innovative software and high-tech hardware products are built on the foundation of outsourcing. It’s because of those strict NDAs that bind the outsourcing providers that it’s not common knowledge.
We can hardly provide one-third of the names we want to showcase on our ‘Clients’ page. For many prominent clients, we cannot reveal that our engineering team worked behind the scenes on their innovative initiatives. While we can disclose that we have collaborated with some of the most visionary companies in the industry on developing their new products, sharing specific case details is often off-limits.
Since the early 1990s, we’ve partnered with numerous startups, and we’d love to highlight instances where our services contributed to a client’s successful acquisition for over half a billion dollars. However, without the names, it lacks the verifiable impact that makes it truly convincing.
As a realist, I don’t think Auriga is the only software services provider in this situation. That leads me to conclude that under-the-hood outsourcing is quite common for breakthrough innovative products, at least in the software/high-tech industry (with which I’m most familiar). I’d appreciate any thoughts and feedback on this issue. Am I delusional, or does your personal experience confirm my story? What do you think?
