point
Menu
Magazines
Browse by year:
January - 2010 - issue > Editor's Desk
2010 The Defining Year for Indian Professionals
Pradeep Shankar
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
As the New Year dawns it is quite normal for one to make new resolutions and look at the trends that are going to pan out in 2010.

Let's take a look at an interesting trend that perhaps many may fail to capture, i.e. 2010 is going to be the year of the Indian Professional.

As businesses in the U.S. crawl out from under the weight of the global recession there is hope that India will stand to gain at the hustings. Several of them will be reinventing themselves to leverage India.

As Vijay Govindarajan, Professor of international business at the Tuck School rightly puts it, “For multinationals, winning in emerging markets is not a ‘nice to do’ thing but is the very oxygen that will fuel future growth in home markets.” To capture the exploding market opportunities in emerging markets, several multinational companies have been laying the foundation since some years.

For instance, Cisco's John Chambers opened the Globalization Center East in Bangalore in 2007. This center, run by Wim Elfrink, is spawning whole new business units to serve India and other emerging markets. Chambers wants 20 percent of Cisco's top leadership to be located in Bangalore. These India-based senior executives, many of whom are Indians promoted from within, will soon call the shots on how Cisco operates globally.

GE has over the years invested in setting up research bases in India and China. Guillermo Wille who steers the John F. Welch Technology Centre, GE's multidisciplinary R&D facility in Bangalore should be proud of the fact that the center has produced 950 patents till now. Researchers and technologists at this center work on a wide range of areas ? from jet engines to locomotives, steam turbines to solar photovoltaic cells, and molecular imaging to materials. Each area here is led by Indian innovators.

Examples like these where multinationals are silently embracing a new organizational form to engage in breakthrough innovations to unlock new markets in countries like China and India are on the rise. This offers unprecedented opportunities for the Indian technology leaders and professionals, not only to reaffirm the strategic role of the country in the tech world but also to see the emergence of leaders from India who have the power to change and influence business globally.

This is once in a lifetime opportunity. Those who are nimble, agile, and smart will be given the mantle to steer. In the new paradigm, every single dy we have to think what we can do to keep ahead. Are you ready?



Please do let us know what you think.

Pradeep Shankar
Editor-in-Chief
editor@thesmarttechie.com
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
facebook