Yesterday I had to participate in a 5 member panel discussion on Innovation, as part of the NASSCOM National Leadership Forum. The topic was – how did we innovate, what drove us to it, what were the challenges and so on. It was held in a Grand Ballroom at the Hyatt, and attended by over two hundred guests. The panel was chaired by a partner of the Boston Consulting Group, who were the “knowledge managers” for the leadership awards exercise. My co-panelists were CEOs of their respective companies – one a 32000 strong BPO, the other two startups around 200 in strength. We started with a 5 min presentation on our innovation, and then there was a panel discussion including questions from the audience.
The crowning moment of glory though, came during the showstopper session of the 3 day conference – a talk by management guru CK Prahalad on how to handle volatility in the market and what companies need to do to survive the economic climate today. There were easily over a thousand attendees, in a huge cavernous ballroom. And all through his talk, CK referred to only one example of how companies have used IT to propagate new business models that allow them to do more for their customer, moving from a traditional seller of product to a service partner – Bridgestone! He mentioned that the company doing this for them in Europe was based right here in India, but said he couldn’t name them because he didn’t have explicit permission from them :) A few mins later, when the talk ended, NASSCOM released a DVD of the case studies, and at that time Som Mittal, President of NASSCOM, told him that one of the winners of the Innovation awards was a company that had enabled the work he mentioned in his book, “our very own Persistent Systems”. And CK said, “Oh, it’s good that they have given you permission finally to mention their name, because they really deserve the credit!” Without doubt, it was the most rewarding moment of my professional life.
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