Mighty Is the Mongrel

Basu has thrived at Hewlett-Packard. In 1985, after two years in Germany, she was sent to India to set up a software unit in that country. Hewlett-Packard was among the first multinationals to tap Indian software prowess by setting up local operations, and Basu would become a formative figure in India's now-booming code sector. The assignment thrilled her: She had long wanted to give something back to her homeland.

Basu's four years in India were rocky. Her Anglo and European colleagues at Hewlett-Packard considered her to be ideal for the job, but local Indians resented her for leaving their country and returning as the standard-bearer of a U.S. company. But by the time she left India, in 1989, Hewlett-Packard's India offices employed 400 people and comprised one of the company's most successful offshore units. Basu's husband, meanwhile, launched one of India's first public computer networks.

A decade later, Basu maintains close ties to India. Besides helping to hire local software developers, she came up with a plan to help found a half-dozen companies in Bangalore and Madras by having Hewlett-Packard contract with them for services. Some of those companies even set up shop in Hewlett-Packard's facilities in order to save money and to obtain proper support from the very start.

To be sure, Hewlett-Packard could have hired people from those companies directly, but Basu has long felt that "you don't have to own all of the organization in order to succeed." The idea of a big company serving as a seedbed for local entrepreneurs appeals to her -- especially since, in many places, people with good ideas but no track record can't get funding. "This is a new way of empowering people," says Basu. "And not just in India. The idea applies just as well to Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, and other developing countries with lots of technical talent."

The interconnectedness of hybridity, innovation, and growth still eludes most Americans. In the new economy, ideas and innovation -- the chief currency of hybrids -- are at the heart of commercial success. The costs of assembling the minds required to develop a conceptual product are small compared with the potential rewards of setting a standard or creating a "killer" application. So canny employers are often willing to pay the finest foreign talent even more than they pay local talent -- not underbidding for foreign talent, as nativists fear, but often overbidding.

That is a principle by which Basu has worked for 17 years. "We use our diversity to great advantage," she says. The mathematics of creativity means that casting a wide net for key people is a necessity. But the value of diversity involves more than just numbers. Strangers instinctively question things that natives take for granted. They are in a position to stimulate new perspectives because, to put it simply, many things strike them as odd or stupid. That's why it's great for any tribe to have a smart stranger injected into it. Under the right conditions, the newcomer aids the group -- an effect that is increased if the group is already mongrelized, because then resistance to the outsider will be lower.

Identity: Roots Are Not a Zero-Sum Game

The shiny steel machine bellows like a whale. Donald Jagau, his long hair wrapped in a net, leans over the belly of the machine and shifts the position of a small circuit board that is inching along a conveyor belt. Holding a gas torch in his gloved hand, he burns some excess solder off the machine's scrubber. Sweat runs down his forehead, gathering in a pool above his plastic goggles. It is 90 degrees in the sealed, brightly lit "hot-air" room. But Jagau steps lightly. He's used to the heat. He grew up in the jungles of Borneo, where the heat is worse.

One day in the summer of 1995, while cutting down a tree in the thick forest surrounding his village, Jagau heard an announcement on his portable radio. A U.S. company was looking for workers to hire and train for skilled jobs in one of the first high-tech factories in Kuching, Malaysia. The only requirement was a knowledge of basic English and a high-school degree. Jagau had both. He also had a desire to earn more than he could by cutting down trees and growing rice in nearby paddy fields.

The U.S. company, Hadco, makes printed circuit boards. It already had a factory in Silicon Valley, but it needed a foreign location to cut costs. It chose Kuching, which is an hour's flight from Penang, Malaysia's high-tech center. The move meant lower costs, but it also meant recruiting an entire workforce from scratch. To guarantee that new employees understood how to run an advanced electronics plant, the company planned to send about 100 of them to its factory in the United States for an 11-month apprenticeship.

It took Jagau three hours, traveling by riverboat, van, and bus, to reach Kuching. He got the job.