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Google and Microsoft teach us not to fear brain drain www.asia.nikkei.com
Palo Alto, U.S. -- Name one thing Microsoft and Google have in common beyond competing in a variety of fields from operating systems to browsers and cloud service. They are both headed by an Indian in his 40s.
Satya Nadella, the 49-year-old chief executive officer of Microsoft, is from Hyderabad in Southern India. He studied electrical engineering at university and moved to the U.S. in 1988. He earned a master's degree in computer science and management in the U.S. and joined Microsoft in 1992. After successfully leading Microsoft's cloud business, he became the company's third CEO in 2014.
Sundar Pichai, Google's 44-year-old CEO, is the son of an electrical engineer in the southern Indian city of Chennai. He set foot in the U.S. as a scholarship student at Stanford University in 1993. After working for McKinsey & Co., he joined Google in 2004. He led the development of Chrome, now the world's most widely used internet browser. He reached the top job in 2015.
The southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area nicknamed Silicon Valley is a multiethnic society where nearly 40% of the 3 million or so people who live there are foreign-born. Though Indians trail behind Mexicans and Chinese by sheer number, they are by far the dominant group among startup founders and employees of information technology companies in the area. Their increasing presence at the top of the American IT industry owes to a rich pool of talent at home with the ability to think logically -- nurtured through India's strength in math and science educations -- and English language skills.
In a speech two years ago, addressed to 18,000 Indian expatriates filling a stadium in Silicon Valley, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he considers them as more of a "brain deposit" than a brain drain, as some in India make them out to be. As those people eventually return home, he said, they will contribute to the development of India.
Modi's words were not merely lip service for the occasion. In fact, people like Nadella and Pichai achieved what Indians see as an American dream. They returned triumphantly as heroes and promised to build infrastructure and create jobs. Money and talent are already beginning to flow back home.
Meanwhile, the number of Japanese companies and residents based in Silicon Valley has hit 20-year highs -- 770 and around 44,000, respectively. The increase has been driven by a sense of urgency to catch up with the disruptive force caused by the internet of things, an age we are entering when everything will be connected online. Still, Japan's presence here is smaller than that of not just India, but China and South Korea as well.
"Fears of a brain drain tend to get in the way, and there is not enough support for those willing to leave [Japan] to take on a challenge," laments Gen Isayama, CEO of venture capital World Innovation Lab, or WiL, based in both Tokyo and Silicon Valley.
Some worry that U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First" approach to protecting jobs may undermine Silicon Valley's diversity and competitiveness. But the tech hub has not lost its appeal to businesses and people wanting to innovate.
Just as the height of a pyramid is a function of its base, it may not be too late for Japan to start worrying about a brain drain until it sees a Japanese become a Silicon Valley CEO first.
Published Date:2017-05-23
