(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Wim Elfrink's climb up the corporate ladder has taken him from Holland to France, Italy, Switzerland and the US.
But his latest promotion will take the Dutch polyglot far from his Western comfort zone. As the chief globalization officer at Cisco, Elfrink is taking his wife, two daughters and the family dog from suburban Silicon Valley to Bangalore, India.
Elfrink, who reports directly to Cisco CEO John Chambers, is the vanguard of one of the tech industry's most ambitious globalization campaigns.
The 50,000-person company wants 20% of senior managers working at the proposed Globalization Center in Bangalore by 2010.
The executives will be a mixture of rising stars from San Jose and Bangalore and talent plucked from acquisitions and competitors worldwide.
International business experts say Cisco's executive migration is a shrewd move that should give high-ranking employees critical insight into one of the world's fastest growing economies.
Will Cisco successfully pull it off‾ Does the move foreshadow a brain drain of top talent from the US‾
The executive migration at Cisco, the Silicon Valley's most richly valued company, based on market capitalization, signals that offshoring has evolved from cost arbitrage to strategic imperative. Other companies will likely mirror Cisco's strategy, said AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.
IBM has about 150 executives living in emerging markets, including 35 in India and 89 in China. Last summer, the company moved its global procurement office from Somers, New York to Shenzhen, China, and IBM VP John Paterson moved with it.
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