Great_Laker
New member
Delivering a "Power Talk" to the Management Students of Great Lakes Institute of Management on the 16th of February at the IIT Madras campus, Mr.'Kris' Gopalakrishnan CEO & MD of Infosys pointed out on how the Global Economic Crisis was case study for all management students to learn and emerge much stronger.
In his talk Mr. Gopalakrishnan said "There are tremendous opportunities in the current crisis. The unusual nature of this downturn is its global nature with major developed countries like US and Japan being affected. The recovery will start but the question is how long will it take and it may happen sometime in 2010. The window we need to look at is 2 to 4 years. As a student of management, this is an opportunity to learn and grow stronger. The students are living through a case study and are witnessing something on the scale of the Great Depression in the 1930s and the current crisis has historical significance. India is still growing at 7% and we are affected. We should look at what we need to do to prepare ourselves to come out of this downturn. The worst-case scenario is that there would be a change in the world financial order. I am optimistic in saying that the combined efforts of the various govt and they are pumping tremendous amount of liquidity into the system."
He drew an analogy with the Grand Prix where drivers are speeding at 200 miles per hour and accidents are bound to happen. The question is how do the drivers react and recover. He also spoke about Climate Change and what businesses and companies need to do. Creating services that allow companies to figure out how to manage how to reduce the impact on the environment. Today, we have RF IDs that make it possible to track the location of manufacture of the product. This presents an opportunity for India to be the driver of change.
In the telecom revolution, we moved from landline to mobiles and expanding the market. We can do something similar with climate change. When you look at democracies today, everyone has access to Internet, cell phones. Every individual can vote every single issue. Every single issue can be discussed and debated. We can create knowledge banks like Wikipedia. It is possible to think about a full participative form of govt today. It requires lots of changes at the local level in terms of increased participation. Corporations are just 100 to 150 years old and it is a recent concept. How product development happens, how employees are viewed. In Japan, the number of temporary employees has exceeded the number of permanent employees. The relationship between the corporation and the employee comes to question. P&G are able to launch products through ideas sourced from the Internet. How to do we leverage networks, collaborate and develop products and services, the concept of social networking is going to change corporations. No corporation has fully leveraged these concepts. The concept of corporation and the concept of the govt will change. What worked before will not work in the future. We have started feeling that technology can change everything but we are yet to leverage the full potential. India is one of the few countries where the GDP from services is higher than the GDP from agriculture.
Access to education, access to information is very important. In the last 30 years, 2 billion new consumers have been added. We can talk about a base of 4 billion new consumers in the world. Around 350 million people are participating fully in the world economy but the remaining 700 to 800 million people are yet to participate but there is a lot of potential for countries like India and China. We have to address the needs of a billion people in India in terms of their access to products and services without impacting the environment. We cannot deny the people their needs and we need to find a way to deliver it without impacting the environment. The BRIC countries, the African continent holds opportunities. India has an advantage. Innovation can happen in a saturated market but there is a bigger opportunity to be tapped in India given that 600 million people are yet to avail these services. There is room to achieve economies and bring the price point down in India, which is not possible in the US. The incentive to innovate is lower in the US whereas there is a lot of room to bring the price down and achieve the ROI. Asia has an advantage. In fact, some people term this as the Asian century. Half the world's population is in Asia. India has an advantage in terms of the diversity, the religion, culture, states but it is a single nation. The EU is still trying to figure out how to embrace diversity. Diversity is important when it comes to innovation. It is also important in terms of resilience and risk mitigation. The culture is one of living together inspite of the differences, which reduces the extremes. China and India are predicted to emerge as the economic powerhouses of the world. If we go back 400 years, India and china were 20% of the world's GDP. The demography around the world is changing significantly. The older people are increasing in numbers and the people who can add value to the economy are decreasing. Over time, the productivity and the GDP of the economies will decrease. Few people working would have to support a larger number of old people or in some cases, it is also supported by the govt. India has a unique advantage given that its population is mostly young. There is a thin line separating a society, which is at pain and the one, which is at revolution.
We must be mindful of the fact that the youth need to be equipped to take up jobs and become productive, failing which it can lead to undesirable consequences. In the past, we had a shortage of computer science graduates and the others were going abroad. We recognized this and we introduced a 3.5 month training to mould engineers into software engineers. We need to invest in training, education and leverage technology to create wealth and jobs. Computer technology is 60 years old. The first 30 years were about figuring what a computer is, the models for computing. Computers were meant for nerds, geeks then. In 1981, personal computing has moved to the mainstream, as a productivity tool. There is a pervasive computing environment today and it is impacting every aspect of our life but there is some way to go in terms of integrating these technologies. An example is the GPS in Cars, which is available in other countries. This shows how sensors are interacting with humans. Today, we can think about a small device in our hands and it can store libraries of information in the range of terabytes of data. We haven't fully figured out how to use it and I feel the innovation would continue for the next 30 years. We also have biotechnology; Nano technology which have lot of potential for innovation and it is intersected by IT. The important traits for success would be the ability to learn, curiosity, authenticity, discipline, passion, problem solving ability, bias for action and measurement. Attitude plays a huge role in shaping these behaviors. We should be able to earn the trust of the people around you. It is important to combine talent with discipline and passion. He concluded his talk by referring to a poem by Bessie Anderson Stanley about the measures of success.
In his talk Mr. Gopalakrishnan said "There are tremendous opportunities in the current crisis. The unusual nature of this downturn is its global nature with major developed countries like US and Japan being affected. The recovery will start but the question is how long will it take and it may happen sometime in 2010. The window we need to look at is 2 to 4 years. As a student of management, this is an opportunity to learn and grow stronger. The students are living through a case study and are witnessing something on the scale of the Great Depression in the 1930s and the current crisis has historical significance. India is still growing at 7% and we are affected. We should look at what we need to do to prepare ourselves to come out of this downturn. The worst-case scenario is that there would be a change in the world financial order. I am optimistic in saying that the combined efforts of the various govt and they are pumping tremendous amount of liquidity into the system."
He drew an analogy with the Grand Prix where drivers are speeding at 200 miles per hour and accidents are bound to happen. The question is how do the drivers react and recover. He also spoke about Climate Change and what businesses and companies need to do. Creating services that allow companies to figure out how to manage how to reduce the impact on the environment. Today, we have RF IDs that make it possible to track the location of manufacture of the product. This presents an opportunity for India to be the driver of change.
In the telecom revolution, we moved from landline to mobiles and expanding the market. We can do something similar with climate change. When you look at democracies today, everyone has access to Internet, cell phones. Every individual can vote every single issue. Every single issue can be discussed and debated. We can create knowledge banks like Wikipedia. It is possible to think about a full participative form of govt today. It requires lots of changes at the local level in terms of increased participation. Corporations are just 100 to 150 years old and it is a recent concept. How product development happens, how employees are viewed. In Japan, the number of temporary employees has exceeded the number of permanent employees. The relationship between the corporation and the employee comes to question. P&G are able to launch products through ideas sourced from the Internet. How to do we leverage networks, collaborate and develop products and services, the concept of social networking is going to change corporations. No corporation has fully leveraged these concepts. The concept of corporation and the concept of the govt will change. What worked before will not work in the future. We have started feeling that technology can change everything but we are yet to leverage the full potential. India is one of the few countries where the GDP from services is higher than the GDP from agriculture.
Access to education, access to information is very important. In the last 30 years, 2 billion new consumers have been added. We can talk about a base of 4 billion new consumers in the world. Around 350 million people are participating fully in the world economy but the remaining 700 to 800 million people are yet to participate but there is a lot of potential for countries like India and China. We have to address the needs of a billion people in India in terms of their access to products and services without impacting the environment. We cannot deny the people their needs and we need to find a way to deliver it without impacting the environment. The BRIC countries, the African continent holds opportunities. India has an advantage. Innovation can happen in a saturated market but there is a bigger opportunity to be tapped in India given that 600 million people are yet to avail these services. There is room to achieve economies and bring the price point down in India, which is not possible in the US. The incentive to innovate is lower in the US whereas there is a lot of room to bring the price down and achieve the ROI. Asia has an advantage. In fact, some people term this as the Asian century. Half the world's population is in Asia. India has an advantage in terms of the diversity, the religion, culture, states but it is a single nation. The EU is still trying to figure out how to embrace diversity. Diversity is important when it comes to innovation. It is also important in terms of resilience and risk mitigation. The culture is one of living together inspite of the differences, which reduces the extremes. China and India are predicted to emerge as the economic powerhouses of the world. If we go back 400 years, India and china were 20% of the world's GDP. The demography around the world is changing significantly. The older people are increasing in numbers and the people who can add value to the economy are decreasing. Over time, the productivity and the GDP of the economies will decrease. Few people working would have to support a larger number of old people or in some cases, it is also supported by the govt. India has a unique advantage given that its population is mostly young. There is a thin line separating a society, which is at pain and the one, which is at revolution.
We must be mindful of the fact that the youth need to be equipped to take up jobs and become productive, failing which it can lead to undesirable consequences. In the past, we had a shortage of computer science graduates and the others were going abroad. We recognized this and we introduced a 3.5 month training to mould engineers into software engineers. We need to invest in training, education and leverage technology to create wealth and jobs. Computer technology is 60 years old. The first 30 years were about figuring what a computer is, the models for computing. Computers were meant for nerds, geeks then. In 1981, personal computing has moved to the mainstream, as a productivity tool. There is a pervasive computing environment today and it is impacting every aspect of our life but there is some way to go in terms of integrating these technologies. An example is the GPS in Cars, which is available in other countries. This shows how sensors are interacting with humans. Today, we can think about a small device in our hands and it can store libraries of information in the range of terabytes of data. We haven't fully figured out how to use it and I feel the innovation would continue for the next 30 years. We also have biotechnology; Nano technology which have lot of potential for innovation and it is intersected by IT. The important traits for success would be the ability to learn, curiosity, authenticity, discipline, passion, problem solving ability, bias for action and measurement. Attitude plays a huge role in shaping these behaviors. We should be able to earn the trust of the people around you. It is important to combine talent with discipline and passion. He concluded his talk by referring to a poem by Bessie Anderson Stanley about the measures of success.