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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

November - 2007 - issue > In My Opinion

I took the road less traveled… that made all the difference!

Vineet Nayar
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Vineet Nayar
It is not news to us that the fast paced industry growth is creating big discrepancy in the demand-supply of quality resources, and an impending resource crunch in the IT Industry. A maddening rush in the industry has been triggered on for recruiting people. From big to small, each player in the market today talks about the number of people they want to hire. In the pursuit of this desirable number of workforce, the real reason for our existence, namely our business some how stands lost.

And in this frenzy across the industry an employee is, to some extent, treated as a mere number. Even when we call them “assets” on our balance sheets, it does not sound really true. Think of what the employee experience has come down to be. I am sure only factors like compensation and monetary benefits drive them these days.

This state of affairs reminds me of Professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne’s famous theory of ‘Blue Ocean’. In the Blue Ocean theory, the ‘ocean’ refers to the market or industry and ‘blue oceans’ are untapped and uncontested markets. These markets provide little or no competition for anyone who would dive in since they are not crowded. A ‘red ocean’, on the other hand, refers to a saturated market where there is fierce competition, already crowded with companies providing the same type of services or producing the same kind of goods.

We need to consistently look for and find ‘blue oceans’ in business that can pay rich returns. And we are perhaps the first company in the world that has applied this theory to create a unique employee experience.

Without a doubt employee experience has remained a ‘red ocean’ where all the companies are focused on fulfilling the baser employee needs which are primarily driven by money and status.


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