Keynote Summaries

Strategies for Navigating the New World: The Role of Technology in Today’s Business

By Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and Managing Director, Infosys Technologies

There is no question that IT has had, and will continue to have, an extraordinary impact on our lives and how we do business. Kris believes that the mandate for IT is to realize its full potential through achieving innovation in seven critical areas that are increasing in influence, and present opportunities for radical innovation:

Digital networks
Pervasive computing
Emerging economies
Sustainability
Smarter organizations
New commerce
Future-proofing society

But how do we get there from here? By recognizing that the next-generation of IT impact will be driven by innovation in IT itself, in the application and management of IT. Reaching a focused strategy for such innovation remains the most immediate challenge. That, and strategic IT sourcing – working with a few trusted partners, which can bring down the cost per transaction and accelerate the pace of innovation.

What it means to you

Innovation won’t come easy. Execution is hard. The questions you have to ask yourself are even harder. For instance:

If you want to leverage your value-Web, how do you make your communications appropriate – and compelling – to discrete and disparate audiences?
It’s one thing to say you’ve put customers at your center. But is there a way to cede control to them without the risk going off the charts?
If our houses are the nodes of the new “smart grids,” how do you decide which computer-activated household devices will become growth giants and which not?
Green technology is all the rage. But can you develop low-impact manufacturing to bring such sustainable products to the market?
If you can’t extrapolate a gain and take it to an emerging economy, how do you profitably open up these new markets with such depressed price points?
How do you rethink the way you manage your people when the global marketplace as totally rewritten the rules of talent management?

Crunching the numbers

In a recent Infosys survey of clients in the banking industry, 78% of banks thought innovation is critical for growth, but only 37% had innovation strategies.
India consumes 12 million mobile phones a month.
India produces 400,000 engineers a year. China produces 600,000 engineers a year.
In the last 30 years, more than 15,000 patents have been granted to the BRIC countries. And the trend rate is exponential.
There are about 1.7 billion working adults in the world who earn less than 2 dollars a day.
Bain & Company did a worldwide analysis of 75 companies across 12 industries and found that on an average, the lowest complexity companies grew revenues 1.7 times faster than their peers.

Sound bites

"Over the last 60 years, information technology has had a significant impact on our lives. Now it is about to hit escape velocity."
"We see a gap between the acknowledgement of the need for innovation and having a focused strategy for innovation."
"In the knowledge economy, information and ideas need to flow back and forth... and not just back and forth between 2 entities, but up and down and sideways and diagonally – across the entire web of the ecosystem."
"Once upon a time, we had a computer. Today, everything IS a computer."
"Irrespective of which industry you belong to, the center of gravity of your market has shifted to the emerging economies. The center of gravity of your talent and workforce has also shifted here."
"Emerging economies will be like the clean sheets of paper where the true green solutions will be created."
"It is no longer a battle between global climate and global economy."
"IT makes it possible to inject the right knowledge to the right person at the right time."
"In emerging economies where the penetration of credit cards is low, digital cash transactions may be to credit cards what mobile phones were to land lines."
"We can do a liver transplant but can’t cure the common cold."
"Imagine your blood sugar-monitoring machine networked to the coffee maker and warning you of sugar in it."
"If we don’t innovate and prepare our IT systems, everything will remain like science fiction. If we do, it will become science."
"Simplification is a non-negotiable imperative – because simplification of IT reduces organizational complexity."

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Driving Change in Today’s World

By Bob Geldof, KBE, Musician, Songwriter, Author, Businessman and Political Activist

We are faced with critical challenges. Not just how to upgrade the enterprise on a reduced budget, but starvation in Africa and climate change that threaten life-as-we-know-it. The repercussions cannot be forecast, which is a primary reason why typical corporate thinking is not sufficient. Instead, Bob Geldof asserted, we must listen to the Cassandras of our generation who speak from the margins – “Those marginal voices are the ones who navigate the future.”

Not only is typical corporate thinking insufficient to meet these kinds of daunting challenges, but typical corporate social responsibility programs are rarely up to the task either. But then, Geldof was not here to provide solutions. He was here to throw down the gauntlet and challenge us to think differently and act with great urgency and focused social intent. He called on the German writer, Goethe, to issue the challenge: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

Crunching the numbers

Kris’ 1.7 billion people MAKE less than US$ 2 a day, but 3 billion people LIVE on less than US$ 2 a day.
China is 135th in the world rankings in per-capita income.
The warming trend of the past 50 years is nearly twice that of the past 100 years.
Even if greenhouse gas emissions completely stopped today, global temperatures would still increase another 0.5% by 2050, putting us at the threshold of the 2%-increase tipping point.
Europeans spend US$ 2.50 per day to subsidize each unwanted cow, while only US$ 0.50 per year to address starvation in Africa.
In 2010, Mt. Kilimanjaro will be without snow for the first time in 12,000 years, but 1 million people are dependent on the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro for water.
Half of Spain is powered by wind power, the equivalent of 11 nuclear power plants.

Sound bites

“Most people surf periods of great change with great fear.”
“There have been globalizations before. Our version of globalization implies the death of distance…which has created the death of certainty.”
“I’m an Irishman and it was another Irishman, George Bernard Shaw, who said ‘A reasonable man adjusts himself to the world. An unreasonable man expects the world to adjust to him. Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable people.’”
“The problem with corporate thinking is that they don’t embrace the marginal. They only pretend they do.”
“We haven’t just seen collapse within the system. We’ve seen collapse OF the system. That system has to be rebuilt – and it can only be rebuilt through cooperation.”
“The values of the corporation have to reflect the inner core of the societies in which they exist.”
“Corporate Social Responsibility can’t be supplemental behavior. It must be fundamental.”
“China is rich, but the Chinese are poor.”
“The artist’s job is to articulate the thoughts of society before society even knows it.”
“India and China are investing heavily in Africa because they know Africa is the future. Europe’s investment in Africa is pathetic.”
“LiveAid raised US$ 150 million. That money built schools that have taught 37 million children. Can you imagine what’s going to happen when they plug in? That’s how you navigate the future.”
“In 1984, when I became engaged there, there were only 3 democracies in Africa. Now there are 23.”
“History never ends. It’s too busy beginning.”

Charting New Waters

By Dr. David Starkey, CBE, TV Historian and Leadership Expert

For Dr. David Starkey, history is as much a matter of perspective as it is a compilation of facts. And from his perspective, Barcelona at the time of Columbus had a much greater impact on the world for its involvement with the introduction of printing. Printing enabled knowledge to be quickly replicated, accurately fixed and preserved, and universally distributed. It was the engine for the massification of culture.

Why should we care? Because digital technologies are powering a new generation of universal knowledge transmission, an even more egalitarian distribution that can reach the far corners of the globe and the far reaches of the economically deprived. We are unleashing a tremendous force, one that challenges our understanding and my ultimately defy our control. Which is why Dr. Starkey concluded his remarks by saying: “It’s in your hands whether we see the end of a renaissance or the beginning of a new one.”

Sound bites

“Ideas are much more important than facts.”
“As a good historian, you don’t want to just enjoy the past. You want to understand it.”
“For Barcelona to be Spain’s greatest port is a triumph of hope over experience, of hope over facts.”
“When printing was introduced, you truly were able to navigate the new world…It was the first time that culture became a mass product.”
“Printing doesn’t simply multiply knowledge. It fixes and preserves knowledge.”
“New knowledge comes from old knowledge, building on what’s come before.”
“Within 20 years of the birth of printing, the book, as we would recognize is today, existed.”

Investing for the Future

By S.D. Shibulal, Chief Operating Officer and Member of the Board, Infosys Technologies

It is said that the Chinese have a curse: May you live in interesting times. But these are more than interesting times; they are turbulent times which hold key implications for today’s businesses.

Geo-political and regulatory trends are determining corporate priorities.
Cyclical effects of reducing consumption are leaving no business or industry untouched.
Emerging consumer patterns and market dynamics are changing the rules of the game.
With business financials under duress, discretionary spending is being impacted.

This has led Infosys to a two-pronged approach to services enhancement: Strengthening our core offerings and developing client-responsive innovation. This has not only solidified our relationships with our clients, but earned us considerable recognition, with awards and high rankings from such esteemed authorities as Gartner Group, Forrester, CEO Magazine, Reputation Institution, and Forbes.

What’s new for you

Infosys has responded to the recent global economic challenges by both strengthening our core offerings and developing client-responsive innovations in the following areas:

Core

Expanding geographic footprint to support clients moving into emerging markets.
Deepening the existing suite of services to help clients reshape their business lines.
Adding major new certifications to raise the bar on our quality-process effectiveness.
Implementing an employee-capabilities enhancement program that will transform our already powerful human capital advantages.

Innovation

Developing new client engagement models to provide clients with greater control and efficiency.
Increasing our vertical domain expertise to provide clients enhanced insights into emerging consumer trends.
Deepening our service and platform offerings in cloud computing to provide clients with a quicker access to the competitive advantages found in this emerging technology trend.
Forging powerful new partnerships, with both academia and clients, to hasten productive developments from our R&D unit.

Crunching the numbers

Global financial losses during this economic downturn have reached US$ 50 trillion.
Banking losses globally have amounted to US$ 4.1 trillion.
In the U.S. alone, 35 banks closed in 2008 and another 77 so far in 2009.
Public debt of the ten leading countries is estimated to rise from 78% of GDP in 2007 to 114% of GDP in 2014.

Sound bites

“We need to innovate for the future.... while also building a strong foundation of the core.”
“This new world is filled with uncertainty, which none of us could have prepared for – in terms of scale, scope or impact. “
“The need to adapt is no longer just an imperative, but is the New Normal.”
“In these times of turbulence, our core has been our strength and is the basis of our resilience.”
“Our imperative is to stay ahead of the curve and keep adding value to our clients.”
“It is a cliché to say ‘Never waste a good crisis’. Which basically means every crisis brings with it opportunity.”

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Big Bang or Big Bust: How the Largest Science Experiment in History was Almost Derailed

By Brain Cox, Particle Physicist

For more than 30 minutes, Cox delighted and astounded us with the extraordinary contrasts between the vastness of the universe and the intricacies of proton acceleration. There is something entirely beyond our ken when you hear that an exponential expansion of the universe began a million, million, million, million, million, and millionth of a second after the Big Bang.

But he brought us all back down to earth and immediate relevance, by saying that “basic, incredibly ambitious science provides the foundation on which our economy rests” because “economies need people who understand cutting-edge knowledge.” The investment in science more than pays for itself – economically, intellectually, and inspirationally. And then, in an unexpected tie-in to Dr. Starkey’s talk, he remarked that “the thing about CERN is the idea of the power of ideas.”

Crunching the numbers

There are 100 billion galaxies in the universe, each with 100 billion stars like our sun.
A proton will travel around the 27-mile circuit of the Large Hadron Collider 11,000 times/second.
The sun is 15,000oC at its center, 6,000oC at its surface.
Gravity changed a million, million, million, million, million, million, and millionth of a second after the Big Bang. The exponential expansion of the universe began just a million, million, million, million, million, and millionth of a second after.
One hundred seconds after the Big Bang, the helium-to-hydrogen ratio in the universe was fixed.

Sound bites

Citing New Zealand physicist and chemist Earnest Rutherford: “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.”
“Are we underfunding our future?”
“The Apollo project didn’t cost anything. It paid for itself several times over.”
“Basic, incredibly ambitious science provides the foundation on which our economy rests. More important, it provides inspiring stories of our origin and place in the universe.”
“Economies need people who understand cutting-edge knowledge.”
“You aren’t pouring money down the drain. You’re pouring it into people.”
“The thing about CERN is the idea of the power of ideas.”

What Should European Businesses do to Navigate the New World

Joschka Fischer, Former minister for Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany

Joschka Fischer thinks the action items for European business as it recovers from the recent credit crisis and economic downturn are fairly simple and straightforward:

Stop repeating the same old mistakes that led us into this crisis.
Understand this new world.
Adjust to this new world and develop your strengths.

This is, of course, much easier said than done. And the challenge to getting it done is more psychological and cultural than it is political or financial. The new competitive reality means that European business can no longer think like European business, but must change to thinking like a global business – with more global perspectives and the willingness to compete in every region and move agilely to fast-breaking opportunities…starting with the Copenhagen summit on climate change. He concluded by setting the bar: “Those who are courageous and creative, with powerful vision, will be on the winning side. It’s not enough to be up-to-date; you have to be up-to-tomorrow.”

What it means to you

In a nutshell, Joschka Fischer thinks we need to think differently and act cooperatively, yet decisively. More specifically:

Don’t rest on your laurels: In the flat world, there are no laurels.
Leverage the strength of the expanded EU – and keep developing those strengths.
Make tough decisions for the greater good, regardless of the political fall-out: “The politicians are lagging behind.”
Since “the way out is global transformation,” look for allies and strategic partners wherever you can find them.
Train children for the new future – it’s not enough to turn out what we’ve always done, no matter how good our education system has been.
Cooperate, cooperate, cooperate – “the old balance-of-power model will not work in the new world.”

Sound bites

“Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR dissolved. This was the real beginning of the 21st Century. The real beginning of globalization came with the end of the Cold War.”
“If Europe doesn’t adjust to this new world order, there will be a decline – though it may only be a relative decline to the old monopolistic order.”
“Those who thought they could make a complete transition to a service-based economy are paying a very high price.”
“Europe is an old country. It’s not the age; it’s the mindset – that’s our greatest challenge.”
“Where would Europe have been in the financial crisis without the Euro? The Euro reflected our combined power. It reflected out common interests.”
“It’s extremely unwise not to understand our strategic interests. There is a connection between the enlargement of the EU and a deepening of integration.”
“We have leaders, but not leadership.”
“The Western living standard is based on unsustainable economic growth.”
“Copenhagen is seen to be about climate change, but it’s really about the economic future – it is a huge opportunity for the business community to show that the private sector is ready to move ahead.”
Regarding the Desertec solar farm in North Africa: “This is the first time that I see, at least in Europe, that big important companies are ready to move with a go-to-the-moon green project.”
“Investment in Africa is not just about human rights, but stability.”

Strategies for Europe

By B.G. Srinivas, SVP & Member of Executive Council, Infosys Technologies Limited

Heterogeneous market requiring localization of strategies
Staying focused on key markets –UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Benelux and Nordics
Leveraging near-shore centers like Czech Republic & Poland
Leveraging Consulting and Package Implementation services in the continent
Leveraging new engagement models for growth

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