As researchers, the phrase “new and interesting” has a special meaning to us. Often, it is the raison d’être. What could pass as a seemingly innocuous phrase to the common man, serves as the proverbial Damocles’ sword, by which academic careers flourish or perish. In the the last few months that I’ve been at the ISB, pursuing my teaching and research and developing the new Centre for IT and the Networked Economy, the question of what is new and interesting in the Indian ICT context has been the drone around which my life is orchestrated. I don’t have all the answers yet, perhaps never will, but what follows are three initial lines of thoughts.

IT and IT Enabled Services: Further Opportunities Loom
Let’s begin by examining the future of the much talked about outsourcing phenomenon. The past decade, bookmarked quite nicely on one end by the years building up to the Y2K phenomenon, and the other by Genpact’s impending billion dollar IPO, can be neatly summarized by Jack Welsh’s now famous quote, “we came for the cost, but stayed for the quality.” In addition to cost savings and quality improvements, another significant, but understated, driver for the multi-national outsourcers is the additional capacity India Inc provides. This materialises, for instance, in the ability of a financial services firm to process in order of magnitude, more loan applications in a given time frame or for an airline such as British Airways to handle significantly more customer service calls, or for a health policy unit to tap into otherwise unavailable pharmaceutical production capacity to develop vaccines in

rapid time for an existing or an emerging epidemic. The capacity advantage, stemming primarily from the favourable demographics, and conditioned on the English language capability, is hard for other countries to reproduce (apologies for the pun).
It is given that the outsourcing phenomenon is here to stay. In many ways it represents the changing face of this historic nation, the economic growth of which Goldman Sachs recently qualified with the word “structural,” alluding to its long-term nature. What is less clearly understood is the long-term economic impact of outsourcing on the outsourcers and their economies. Anecdotal evidence suggests that companies outsourcing are more agile, expanding to newer markets, and in many cases hiring more employees in their own countries. In advance of the coming election year in the US, the time is ripe for a critical long-term econometric analysis of this phenomenon.
Moving forward, the conversation is now shifting towards whether the IT and BPO vendors can move up the value chain, deliver more knowledge intensive services, and ultimately partner in the client’s growth. Nasscom is evangelizing “innovation” as the next mantra, now that quality in the context of global delivery model are a given. Can the Indian IT vendor don the skin of its client and think and deliver exceptional business process service to its client’s customers?
The question is equally interesting if we substitute the IT vendor with its plural. Take for instance the case of Kimberly-Clark, the global health, hygiene, and well-being behemoth.