The future of the industry lies in finding solutions rather than providing services and India would be a significant player in providing solutions to the entire world. Constant learning and innovation is important and the most innovation driven firm will be the most successful in future.

Som Mittal, President of Nasscom highlighted the various changes that is slowly permeating in the global village scenario the customers are highly informative and having a dynamic nature in need assessment that shifts every day. The customers are now asking " what can you do for us " from earlier instances of vendors approaching customers with "what we can do for you ".They are more demanding and look for value for money .

The talent crunch which as increased by 25% to 30 % in the last few years gives out a big picture of India as to how India will harness its talent pool and over its own needs and take on the world with 3 million new jobs being created in the coming years in IT sector alone.

"The ambition of the next generation leaders of the companies must be global, to put the firm in the league of the top three," says Sudip Banerjee, president, enterprise solutions, Wipro Technologies. "There is huge scope for innovation in services. Also there is a shift from deployment of technology to solutions. Leaders in the IT industry should recognise the importance of innovation."

According to Vijay Anand, vice-president, Server Technologies, Oracle India, "There are many silent leaders working for MNCs at their captive centres in India. And these leaders require more core competencies than the leaders sitting at the company's headquarters. This is because the latter are privileged to have several intangibles work in their favour. The challenge that IT leaders from India face is that they have to devise ways to overlook this handicap and create business blueprints for the future. Indian business houses are buying global brands, but they have to think bolder than that, "Leaders have to take great pride in what they know and not in what they don't know"

Uma Balakrishnan CEO, Axcend Automation highlighted the changing customer engagement models. She pointed out that Leadership is a two way commitment but that has slowly got engulfed in change as now the market dynamics are more dictated by stock markets, the revenue forecasts, the linear models wont work in the coming years. Therefore leadership have to be aware of the constraints and over come them to go to the next level.

"Value creation through innovation is the key. Inorganic growth and consolidation are the other solutions to meet the resource crunch that the IT industry is facing," believes Subash Menon, founder chairman, MD & CEO Subex Systems. "The willingness and ability to learn is a must for future leaders," adds Menon. On the other hand, Jairam Srinivasan, SAP Labs believes, "Leaders have to extend the risk envelop further. We must be ready to work with disruptions, as the IT industry is witnessing changes frequently."

-Som Mittal, was of the opinion that leaders must have the risk taking ability to grow in the ranks. There is also a need to get over the dull, smug sense of complacency among those in leadership roles. Citing the example of interviews conducted in firms, he added, "There is a certain amount of ‘Indianness' that we have to shed if we need to be a global firm. In India, we find out about the background of the candidate during interviews. If these questions were asked in the US, it would be a severe breach of his/her privacy." He also laid emphasis on the argumentation of rural BPO movement that would touch base with millions of Indians who are still yet to see the benefits of the revolution of working form home and reaping the benefits of the mainstream job opportunities.

‘DNA for the next generation of IT leaders' was the interesting topic at the Panel discussion held at IIMB on 1st June. Organised by the students of the Post Graduate Programme in Software Enterprise Management (PGSEM), the panel discussion saw some industry heavyweights addressing the issue.

Kishor Jagirdar is a practicing Strategic Consultant .Founder of Infopace Management Pvt Ltd .he can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it \n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it "

Issue BG89 Aug 08

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