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There is a change to the way how outsourcing is being done, and this new change is improving how companies manufacture products and provide services all around the world.

Erik Bethke went on a business trip to South Korea and had a startling revelation.

Making sandwiches is fun.

Bethke is the co-founder of a video game company in Costa Mesa, California called Taldren, developers of the very successful Star Trek: Starfleet Command game series. He flew half-way across the world to discover that a video game of sandwich preparation could make him itch to play.

The game was created by South Korean game developers who appeared to Bethke more fast, more affordable and more out of control when it comes to game ideas.

Not like some of their American counterparts who are over-thinking; overproducing thus held back in their imagination, these Asian game engineers are bold to take risks with concepts that may at first appear off-the-wall, unlikely to be accepted by gamers.

But sometimes, “off-the-wall” works.

To capitalize on this “out-of-the-box” thinking, Bethke has opened an office in Seoul and planning to tap in the game design pool in Asia and market these ideas to the West and maybe worldwide.
(That Seoul office is now HQ for the increasingly popular Go-Pets, an online virtual community where members can download, care for 3D virtual pets and interact with fellow Go-pets owners around the world.)

Bethke is among many other entrepreneurs who are discovering that outsourcing may not only be about contracting non-essential business operations to a service provider  in order to cut costs, but it can also be about innovation, increasing value and quality.

In a world united by the Internet and globalized communication, an enterprise can cater to a worldwide market and also acquire resources from anywhere.

Senior executives based in California can communicate tasks to a manufacturer partner in China while auditing and word processing tasks can be performed by specialists based in Philippines.

But to remain ahead of the competition is not only dependent on minimizing costs but maintaining and even improving on quality as well in order to benefit consumers’ trust.

A company’s success is not dependent on by the nationality of its employees, but by the quality and originality of its goods, services, administration, transparency, environmental practices, and degree of corporate social responsibility.

When companies operate globally in outsourcing their processes, goods and services, they expose goods and services to probing evaluation from customers and government regulators in all countries and continents they do business in. Through the internet, news can spread fast; bad reviews can spread even faster.

As more and more companies and businesses realize the potential of outsourcing to maximize their reach in acquiring the best materials and human talents for their products and services; to subjecting themselves to multinational standards and scrutiny at a global scale; to maintaining a standard in providing for a global consumer market, product labels such as “Made in the US” or “Made in Philippines” would be a thing of the past. It would be more correct to say “Made in Earth” for one label, for one world.

References:

  1. Amelio, William. “Worldsourcing replaces outsourcing”. 10 December 2007. Viewpoint, Business Section,  British Broadcasting Corporation. Accessed 26 June 2008. Link here
  2. Boyd, Clark. “Game makers reach out to the world”. 18 May 2004. Technology, British Broadcasting Corporation. Accessed 26 June 2008. Link here
  3. “Taldren, Inc.” Wikipedia article. 11 August 2006. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 26 June 2008. Link here
  4. “GoPets” Wikipedia article. 26 August 2005. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 26 June 2008. Link here

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