Great Lakes institute of Management today played host to one of the leading lights to our generation. Entrepreneurship wasn’t this close to Great Lakes, when one of the cofounders of Infosys visited the sprawling campus. Dr. Bala V Balachandran, Dean Great Lakes introduced the guest by referring to the spirit of entrepreneurship that we know as Infosys today. Over the next hour and a half Mr. Shibulal took the cohort on a journey of five global trends sweeping the world and in turn changing the way we live, work and enjoy our lives.
First major trend discussed was the tremendous growth of telecommunications. Gone were the days of endless waits of trunk calls, instant access is the new age mantra. This phenomenon has single handedly leveled information access for both the haves and have-nots.
Second trend mentioned was the Connectivity-paradigm. Global delivery model that Infosys started with wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for the technology ecosystem available at the time. This has made innovation a phenomenon of not just developed economies but developing ones too. Gone are the days of monopoly of innovation.
Third trend was the changing demographics, especially the aging of populations in USA, Japan among others. This has definitely made health care the most talked about topic today. Technology can help by developing smarter medical devices. In response to question about another off shoot of this phenomenon, audience responded with Knowledge management in organizations. Mr. Shibulal later explained how aging of the working population would strain the knowledge transition processes in organization.
Fourth major global trend was Sustainability. With Copenhagen as backdrop, this point cannot be emphasized more. Increasingly, major corporations understand the implications of green practices. As an example speaker mentioned how power utilities would seize to remain unidirectional and instead develop into multidirectional multidimensional model.
At last the speaker mentioned the trend of smarter organizations. Citing Infosys as an example, from its infancy as Infosys gained size, complexity of the processes increased. This increase was not linear but exponential, and this underlying fact of increasing complexity is what companies world over are trying to solve. How to make organizations less complex? The speaker went on to elucidate the characteristics of smart organizations and four dimensions of such organizations: simple, adaptable, learning and sustainable.
The floor was then opened to questions and discussions flowed from the corporate governance, sustainability to business consulting and coming of age of Indian IT industry. The audience was awed by the depth of the session and by the presence of a stalwart of Indian entrepreneurial zeal. Indeed a truly remarkable evening to remember.
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