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It's the Humans, Stupid!

Technology doesn’t just develop itself, and talent management skills are vital when it comes to innovative projects.
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The humans get a pretty rough ride of it in Pixar's latest film Wall-E, a story of environmental desolation and robotic romance. It's 2700AD and with warnings of imminent environmental disaster lost in the mists of time, our Earth is a waste dump, and what's left of the human race ekes out a sterile life high above the planet.

And yet (and remember that Pixar operates with the most powerful and sophisticated graphics capabilities available) who or what is it that has created a simple love story of such apparent allure? Whatever is capturing the imagination of the audiences and the applause of the critics has certainly not emerged of its own accord from the server farms that Pixar uses for animation.

One venture that I advise enables small and medium-sized enterprises to set up their own captive operations overseas. In its initial two years it has helped over 25 UK companies grow their own operations in India, each employing between five and 25 local professionals. Typically UK software vendors, systems integrators and games ventures, they are moving abroad not only to improve their cost competitiveness, but also to widen their search for human talent, as the UK market for relevant talent is very tight. And is the recession biting? No the business of this particular venture is still growing fast. And yet the Financial Times reported last week that one in 10 UK computer science graduates is still unemployed several months after graduation -- the highest rate in any subject.

The loss of the two discs at HM Revenue and Customs, containing the personal details of 25 million of us and dismissed by Radio 4's Today program as "yet another IT failure", has now been more correctly identified in the subsequent Poynter report as "entirely avoidable" and due to "serious institutional deficiencies". To misquote former President Bill Clinton: "It's the humans, stupid!"

I have been an active player in the IT industry since the early 1990s. My business roots then were in the well-matured global chemical industry, an industry that from its foundation in the mid-1800s was about applied technology, innovative to its heart, and grown over the subsequent decades to be all-pervasive in its impact in every aspect of our lives. Remove applied chemistry and society as we know it would just not exist.

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