CHANGING HIS MIND THE LAST MINUTE, Sunil Bhalla, now the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Voice Communications Division at Polycom, gave up on his chance to study in the U.S. in the late seventies, after he had graduated in mechanical engineering from the IIT-Banaras Hindu University. “I joined Union Carbide, and realized that there was really no scope for engineering research work in Indian industry during the time,” recounts Bhalla. After a couple of years at Carbide, Bhalla finally gave in to the lure of a degree in the U.S. and came to Lehigh University.

“I had a fellowship to continue research in internal combustion engines,” says Bhalla. That was when he chanced upon a computer and was awed by its capabilities. “This is perhaps one the greatest qualities of this country’s education program,” says Bhalla, who spoke with his faculty about changing his program of study from engines to computer aided design. “The faculty was so supportive and encouraged me to pursue what I was interested in, which is rare in any other country.” Bhalla graduated with a CAD/CAM specialization and joined Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). When Bhalla joined, the team numbered little more than a dozen engineers. “At that time, DEC couldn’t grow fast enough,” recalls Bhalla. Eight years later, Bhalla was leading the 250-strong division at DEC, when the company hit the skids.

Bhalla and three of his colleagues decided to leave DEC and joined a “hot” CAD/CAM firm: Computervision. He was the director of strategic marketing and was instrumental in taking it public. In the early nineties, Computervision went through market turmoils, when Bhalla met the CTO of Polaroid at a dinner. “Polaroid was in transition,” says Bhalla, “where the market was going digital and Polaroid was trying to get into it.” The cautious Bhalla asked to review the company’s business and was given a paid opportunity to do so. What he found startled him. “For thirty and more years, Polaroid had virtually no competition, which had engendered a culture of “inward looking” within the company,” recounts Bhalla. While other companies took change as a challenge and tried shaving time off in bringing new products to the market, Polaroid teams were almost inert to change or innovation. “In comparison, Ford took only five years to build a new car, Boeing built the 777 in less than eight, a new camera from Polaroid took more than a decade!”

Bhalla joined a revitalized team and led the process of revamping the instant imaging business. “We discovered that almost every family in America owned a Polaroid—excepting the person didn’t know where that camera was,” laughs Bhalla. In the summer of 1998, Bhalla launched i-Zone at the Toy Fair in Tokyo, an instant camera designed for the younger generation. A million cameras in the first year, four million in the next two years, and Polaroid zoomed from a 1 percent market share to over 10.5 percent, driven by Bhalla’s strategic partnerships and marketing acumen. A very different role from his previous enterprise marketing role, Bhalla remembers this stint with a lot of warmth. “The learning was intense, the daily experiences were so rich,” recalls Bhalla. Polaroid made deals with Disney, Legoland and others in the process.

When Bhalla’s proposal to Polaroid to open a innovation center in the west coast fell through, he thought it time to move. “I wanted to move to the west, where the culture of working is as different from the east as night and day,” observes Bhalla. The seasoned marketing man found an opportunity at Polycom through an executive search.

“The recurring driver in my career has been the constant hunger to innovate—can I smell a business opportunity, build the product and run with it?” says Bhalla. “I would be very disappointed if I cannot work on something that changes people’s lives. Technology has that incredible capacity, it is up to us to capture those capacities and derive products for people.”

At Polycom, Bhalla observed the inflection point in technology when telephony was possible on the Internet. “The immediate conclusion was: these are only packets delivered over the Internet, so why limit ourselves to voice,” recalls Bhalla. The team at Polycom has expanded the voice bandwidth from the narrow band to wide band, adding octaves. “We are now offering products that deliver extremely superior voice quality,” points out Bhalla, who encourages everybody to experience his product qualities. “It is another product that will change the markets.”

In building his team, Bhalla has put to use lessons he has learnt from the past. “Teams work well in environments of trust and integrity. When a person interacts with another, two key elements—character and competence play vital roles. If the character is rich, competence can be built,” says the general manager. The second key learning, says Bhalla, is to seperate the person from the problem.

“Dissonance is not about the person, it is about the issue at hand,” points out Bhalla. “And instead of focusing on positions (I want this done) I encourage people to focus on interests. This way, we open up channels for innovations and solutions.” The well-tried methods have served Bhalla well. “The final learning is to learn to walk away. At times, dissonance is resolved by simply detaching yourself from the person and the problem.”

Bhalla feels that his role at Polycom is just beginning. “The market opportunities are so vast. I would like to be in this learning curve and participate in this growing market.” Learning, says Bhalla, is as important as breathing.