> Garett Jones (2013) builds upon Kremer's O-ring theory [...] He then goes on to show that small international variations in average worker skill per country result in both large international and small intra-national income inequality.

This sums up the situation to me. The value of the skilled worker depends on the value (and desired quality) of what is being produced with co-workers. So in theory if you could build up a distributed team of these skilled lower-salaried workers, have them work well remotely with each other, have a high sense of quality and share other relevant cultural norms, then high-quality/value products could be produced for such a market demand.