2/29/2012 10:58:00 AM

Innovative Leadership

WE INDIANS HAVE THE ABILITY AND THE BRAINS TO
EXECUTE ANY COMPLEX IT PROJECT, BUT WE NEED TO
MOVE OUT OF THE OUTSOURCING MINDSET TO
EXPERIMENT WITH NEW IDEAS AND INNOVATIONS.

There is no doubt that in the last 3 decades Indian IT industry
has done extremely well. It has not only generated high paying
jobs for millions of Indians but has also added substantially to
the GDP of the country. Low cost, highly skilled, educated and
fluent English speaking manpower available in India on the
supply side matched on the demand side by foreign consumers
looking for cheaper IT solutions that could be effectively
outsourced to other countries.
Indian IT companies therefore focused on revenue by getting
manpower intensive software projects from the western world.
We therefore got into the groove of developing, coding and
maintaining information systems that were outsourced to us in
huge numbers. It resulted in even some start-up IT companies
becoming billion-dollar conglomerates within a matter of few
years.

IN THIS 30-YEAR LONG SUCCESS STORY, WE NEVER
REALLY BECAME A PART OF MAKING THE BLUEPRINT AS
ARCHIECTS, BUT FOCUSED ON OUR CONTRACTUAL
OBLIGATIONS TO DELIVER WHAT WE WERE ASKED TO
DELIVER. WE NEVER BECAME SOFTWARE LEADERS WHO
COULD COME UP WITH KILLER IDEAS THAT COULD
CHANGE THE WAY THE WORLD WORKED.

Unfortunately all along we never changed our stance. We kept
doing what others (westerner) wanted us to do. In simple
terms someone else was making the blueprint and we did the
execution, focusing largely on costing, quality and timelines.
I am not talking about small applications, platform, protocols
or black boxes that can be good use but a limited use. Some of
our companies, even start-ups have in the past development
such products that were innovative but had a limited
applicability.

World class, Worldwide products are those innovations which in
a way become game changers, they impact our everyday life.
Internet for example is one such idea that now we cannot
afford to live without. Electronic mail (E-mail) was the natural
and inevitable extension of networked communication
technology that developed along with the evolution of the
Internet. It is most widely used application on the Internet
today.

Use of computers was a clumsy affair in the early days of
computing. A user had to struggle with command-oriented
language. Microsoft responded to this difficulty and came up
with windows operating environment as an add-on to MS-DOS.
This provided the simple means to operate Graphical User
Interface. Today windows with a click and drag environment
has made life so easy for everyone, no wonder it has captured
more than 90% of the market share.

Google is yet another marvel of sorts that is a staple diet of
any computer user today. This is a wild fire idea that started
as a PhD research project at the Stanford University in March
1996. It came to be a full-blown mammoth search engine to
search World Wide Web. Google Inc. appointed its first CEO in
March 2001, barely 10 years ago. Today what started, as an
idea has become a billion dollar net worth company in just 1
decade! The mission of the company is so simple, To organize
the worlds information and make it universally accessible and
useful. It happened because someone asked, Why cant we
do this? It could de worthwhile.

Marc Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook is the 35
th
wealthiest
person in the US with a net worth of $6.9 bn. As a second year
student of computer science at Harvard, he developed the idea
of a social network that has affected the social life and activity
of people in many ways. It has become a game changer and is
being used as a marketing tool by corporates, politicians and
also by those who want to bring about a change in the social
structure. It was a start point as well as a catalyst for the
Egyptian revolution. Marc Zuckerbergs initial investment to
create was just $1,000!

Idea of SMS through internet became a reality with Twitter that
was launched in July 2006 and today has more than 200
million users generating 190 million tweets a day and handles
1.6 billion search queries per day.

There has already been such an outpouring of emotions, so
many tributes and eulogies to Steve Jobs. Does the world
really need another sentimental obituary? What remains to be
said? Nothing really. But I had to ask myself: Why do I feel
such sadness at the death of a man I never met? And why do
so many of us feel a void in the world with his departure?
Much has been written about Steves vision and
creative genius and his unparalleled ability to blend design and
business model innovation to reinvent the way we read books,
listen to music, and surf the Net. In the process he
transformed industry leaving the world a better place. But all
this is about the head. Why has Steve touched our hearts?
I wonder if the reason for our sadness, this outpouring
of feeling even from competitors like Bill Gates and Eric
Schmidt, or companies like Samsung and Nokia isnt because
of the WAY Steve lived his life even more then WHAT he
accomplished. More than any other person we are aware of,
Steve lived life on his own terms completely oblivious of what
others thought of him, and not wasting a second on things he
didnt think important. This freedom resulted in stunning
originality in products and business design. It allowed him to
take personal and business risks most of us cannot
contemplate. Much of his success can be attribute to this.
Where did this fearlessness come form? In his much
circulated 2005 address to Stanford students, he offers an
insight, Death is likely the single best innovation of life.
Remembering that Ill be dead soon is the most important tool
Ive ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Because almost everything just fall away in the face of death
leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are
going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking you
have something too lose. You are already naked. There is no
reason then to not follow your heart your time is limited, so
dont waste it living someone elses life. By so thoroughly
embracing death, Steve was able to truly live life in unabashed
pursuit of his dreams unencumbered by fears and unfazed
failure.
The hole we feel in our heart then is because Steve
truly lived his life in a way we wish to emulate. We too wish to
have the courage to pursue our dreams without fears, to live
our lives on our own terms without caring about the approval
of others, and to eventually eave the world a better place. The
void is because our world is desperately short of leaders, who
are role models, and we just lost a precious one, who showed
us that doing well and doing good are not mutually exclusive
goals in business. The best tribute that we can pay to the man
is to live our lives the way he lived his with hunger, with
courage and with tenacity.

We have brilliant minds and students coming out of IITs and
NITs are probably the best in the world, but none could come
up with world-class killer applications as enumerated above.
Come to think of it, most of the great ideas didnt require huge
R&D cost. It was the price of the idea that becomes priceless.
We do not lack funds or access to technology for creating or
executing ideas that require big R&D cost. We have large IT
companies who have huge funds to invest in R&D and also
employ hundreds and thousands of IT professionals, each
better than the other. We have the brains and now we have
the money, then what is the hitch?
I feel it is more to do with our mindset. The stance
of our professionals may not be as aggressive as required for
such innovations. We also lack sprit of adventure - trying out
something foolish, new, unconventional and we dont like
taking risks. In a totally connected world, marketing of an idea
is not an issue any more. If you have an idea which can change
the world then there are means available to experiment and
sell your idea. We have always chased dollars but it is now high
time to create ideas that will be chased by dollars.

Innovation in its simplest form is the concept of a mall. It
doesnt require great rocket engineering. A mall is a big 3-
storeyed building with says 2lakh square feet of air-conditioned
space, elevators and escalators. Why didnt we come up with
the concept of a mall? The West did it, Middle East adopted it
and we later copied it.

If I can call it ILQ Innovative Leadership Quotient, then in
essence that is what we lack today as far as information
technology is concerned. We have the ability and the brains to
execute any complex IT projects but we need to move out of
our comfort zone to experiment with new ideas and
innovations. Individuals, students, educational institutes and
large corporations must all work together or individually, to
come up with at least a few worldwide killer applications in the
coming days.


Siddharth Sharma
(CS II year)