The recently concluded NASSCOM Indian Leadership Forum provided some fascinating insights into the thinking of business and academic leaders in the post recession environment. Renowned Harvard Business School Professor Michael Tushman presented his favourite argument for ambidextrous innovation, urging business leaders to pursue twin strategies of exploitation and exploration to continue to benefit from the extraction of profits from mature services while they searched for new markets and services to build new revenue streams. His work amply underscored why some companies both in the large and medium segments of the software industry have continued to grow even in adverse market conditions and the industry itself can take heart from the success of its innovation efforts.

The NASSCOM Innovation movement which began in the early years of the new millennium has moved from new product and service ideas to new processes and business models and will now look at new pricing models and access methods for clients to avail of the capabilities of the Indian IT sector. With industry growth rates expected to clock nearly twenty percent in the coming fiscal, there will be ample opportunities for young start-ups as well as established players to embrace innovation and look at new models for talent management, service delivery and market access. University of Colorado Chancellor Pam Shockley, Booz Consultant and former Editor of Harvard Business Review Tom Stewart and New York Times Futurist and Technology Pioneer Michael Rogers emphasised the need for “out of box” thinking too in their respective areas of skills development, dealing with millennial in the workforce and searching for opportunities in a changing business environment.

The success of NASSCOM as an association is evident from the stupendous response the annual event receives from politicians, academicians, thought leaders and business leaders from all over the world. Most of the sessions, crafted with care by the experienced organising group led by twenty year NASSCOM veteran Sangeeta Gupta added value to industry analysts and strategists and provoked discussions galore, not just in the sessions but in the active networking through the three days of the conference. In a truly breakaway session, a “leader to leader” discussion on inclusion by the industry led by Jerry Rao enthralled a select group of CEOs and editors in a discussion on the imperative and models by which firms in the industry could and should reach out to the community. Ranging from one extreme view that industry should focus on what it does best, which is generating profits and value for all its stakeholders and leave the process of “doing good” to dedicated NGOs to another that true inclusion should mean engaging every associate in the organisation in the process of reaching out and making a difference to the community, this session demonstrated the width and depth of thinking that now characterises this industry and the value it adds to the country.

With the recent spurt in demand for global outsourcing and the increased penetration of Indian firms into new geographies, horizontal services and vertical domains, the only voice of concern about the NASSCOM conference is the relative shortage of industry customers amidst the participants. While many of us have, over the years, encouraged our customers to speak at this forum without fear of their being lured away by competition, the opportunity for hundreds of incumbent customers and many more potential users of Indian services to be made aware of the capabilities of this industry would probably be well served if NASSCOM were to follow the example of its own members and export its star conference to foreign lands. The industry has matured enough for NASSCOM to emulate the COMDEX success of a past era and become the event for corporate America, Europe and Asia to flock to. A point to ponder perhaps for all of us as the aura of one more successful conference fades and we get back to the business – of building a successful industry and a successful India!