Star performer, Competence, Incompetence, Mediocrity!

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most people—especially most teachers and most organizations—concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.

My own search engine

The number of search sites is also skyrocketing, as the technological barrier for search has been lowered. In December, Manning Publications published Lucene in Action, a guide to creating search engines with open-source software called Lucene, which is already used on singer Bob Dylan's Web site. Armed with this book, the average programmer can create a search engine in less than a day, says co-author Erik Hatcher.

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Outsourcing Innovation

Sweeping Overhaul
India is emerging as a heavyweight in design, too. The top players in making the country world-class in software development, including HCL and Wipro, are expected to help India boost its contract R&D revenues from $1 billion a year now to $8 billion in three years. One of Wipro's many labs is in a modest office off dusty, congested Hosur Road in Bangalore. There, 1,000 young engineers partitioned into brightly lit pods jammed with circuit boards, chips, and steel housings hunch over 26 development projects. Among them is a hands-free telephone system that attaches to the visor of a European sports car. At another pod, designers tinker with a full dashboard embedded with a satellite navigation system. Inside other Wipro labs in Bangalore, engineers are designing prototypes for everything from high-definition TVs to satellite set-top boxes

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