Business Technology Track

ILS 2008

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Entrepreneurship Track

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Think Small – Technology for Emerging Markets

‘Think Small – Technology for emerging markets’ was the topic of discussion at the panel organised by the Business and Technology club. The panel aimed to answer the questions: What will affect the way we think and act in the future? What will drive technology innovations in the future? What is the impact that technology can have on emerging markets? How do you reach the bottom of the pyramid to tap into undeveloped growth opportunities? How do you build your people to achieve that goal? And, most importantly what does an emerging market need? These and many more questions were answered today at the BTC Track of the ISB Leadership Summit. The key issue discussed in the panel involved answering these specific questions to grow in emerging markets like India. The eminent group of panellists included Suman Bose, Country Director - Dassault Systèmes, India, Ravi Mallela, Delivery Head, Microsoft Global Services, Manish Soman, Senior Vice President, Genpact and Cyprian D'Souza, India Head, PRM Chief People Officer, Financial Services – Capgemini.

Bose started off the panel with a presentation on ‘Technology in the transforming world’. He said that his talk was based on the hypothesis that the emerging world is equal to the transforming world. He said that the five things that would transform the way we think and act were a virtual universe, communities, globalised economy, knowledge trading and a focus on people and environmental friendliness. He said that healthcare, climate change, sustainable energy, defense and security and creating and protecting the identity of self, family & friends would be the five things that would drive technology innovation. “Emerging economies will start inventing for the sake of inventing,” he concluded.

Mallela then gave an overview of Microsoft’s various technologies for emerging markets like India. He said that Microsoft vision was based on the question, ‘How can we be relevant to this country?’ He talked about Multipoint and Split Screen, two technologies that were being implemented in India that enabled five or six children to use a single desktop parallely, with each person having a portion of the screen to work. He said the key message he would like to emphasise was, “Listen to the customer”.

D’Souza then gave a presentation focussing on ‘Managing workforce in an emerging market’. He said India could offer global companies – expertise in technology, industry and management, scale, process mindset and a learning aptitude. He said emerging markets need to develop and nurture people for a global environment, provide world class learning infrastructure and disseminate information globally.

In the concluding presentation, Soman said the needs of the emerging markets were faster implementations of best practices, inability to invest large amounts in technology and high cost of commercial tools. “Your customer is not worried about technology,” he concluded. The panel ended with the speakers answering a range of audience questions.