One place where Canada is a leader

India expects to grab toon biz from China The animation industry is one place where Canada is a leader. In India they know we're strong in animation, energy and natural resources technologies. Although energy (green) and natural resources have a rosy future, you can see Animation stirkes a chord. Our interlocutors during meetings with Nasscom clearly were interested, it's just like if they knew too well that the future is entertainment!

Our Animation expertise is something we can get milage out of with India. I mean we should trade that expertise for something of value from them, in exchange we send Animation business their way. Canada has a big push to make for the enrollment in sciences, can we get India to step up to the plate. They have too many people who wants to study and not enough spots available, I'd like to tie in Animation training or Animation in the broader sense in so that both countries get something out of the collaboration.

Finding recomfort in work coming back?

Often I meet with companies in the services business who at the first occasion will tell me the work they do is work their client was not satisfied when done Offshore. I'm not sure what to think of that. It's good for them, to have the business. I'd like to better understand their business to be able to assess if it is really a good thing. The questions that go through my mind are:

• Is the work high end value work, or is it repetitive tasks, automatable mid-term?
• What did they have to do to sign up the work, show a price difference not small enough to justify the move on the client's part?
• Or is maybe this is real solid work, worth investing time and sweating bullets building an expertize in because the long term return potential is good?

Then I go back to who the heck has the time to evaluate all of this and make a thorough business case for every opportunities. Strategically executing is difficult, compared to opportunistically running a business. On one hand you act according to carefully chosen priorities, on the other you react to what is in front of you. Yet I don't think it's one or the other, we need to have a good mix of the two to thrive as a business.

So to understand which opportunitistic deals are worth taking a long term view on, I realize more and more than a company needs to know where it is going strategically. Anyhow the global services business is competitive, landing accounts has a lot to do with differientiate yourself but not at any price!

China's innovation

Talking to Ronan Mcgrawth from Rogers he was telling me that China is trying to understand why they innovate less than people in North America. The chinese are now looking into how they could change the school system so that they still excell in Math, but that they assimilate how to create innovate. In my mind it's more in the way China is, than in the school system. It's going to be interesting how it pans out.

Avian Flu

After visiting India, I realize that the infrastructures are not there just yet. The roads that's pretty obvious, but also broadband's penetration to this day is still fairly low. In the case of outbreak of the avian flu broadband is in my mind one way to keep the economy going while minimizing the risk of spreading the virus.

In Canada we can count on all of our employees to have broadband, they already work from home from time to time. It's an objective for our business to be in a position that we could all work from home in the near future with no disruption in the services.

All in All about Nasscom

A very well ran conference. No glitch, lots of networking opportunities. At times the content was spotty but overall I still give it two thumps up.

Initial thinking about Canada in this whole picture is still blurry. I'm happy we had sizable deliguation here, with the GTMA, and ITAC, we made up for one of the big contingent present. I think it's important we brand Canada to India as much as we can, this is an emerging market(export) and a competitive advantage(import). I believe though that Canadian companies are slow to show up at the indian party.

They are going to start buying products soon enough, they are making good money, they will consume, it's important that not only our maple syrup is sold here, btw this would be a killer product here since their deserts are so sweet!

India's product is IT services. Coming from the ICT services, companies back home still perceive India as a threat, a better approach would be to frame the business around tapping their capacity, while back home we focus on the critical part of the offering. So next year I hope more companies show up.

Discussing with Bill Elliot and Murray Jan, we realize there is some education that needs to take place on how to tap rising India advantages, ie - trying to get our companies comfortable enough to come here and develop relationships to do business with India. I'll keep you posted on further thoughts!

Partiotism in India

India, Inc.'s new mantra: Serve thy motherland- The Economic Times

The patriotism in India is really strong. Listening to the President of India speak today at Nasscom they are going for the home run and calling on partiotism to unite and take it. All in all they shouldn't wait for people hand it over to them, go for it. They have an objective of 60B total revenue in IT services for 2010, he is saying "Why not 200b, why not set an objective of 200b for 2010?". Well buckle up people because those services are going to come from somewhere.

They are really proud of what they are doing, and they are pumping it up. They want to rule the IT services business, they have the momentum. The contribution of the IT services industry to the rise of India is undisputable. Talking with people visiting India often, they call it the New India.

Tata

Today I visited one of Tata TCS' facility in Mumbai. Tata is a group of 80 companies, they have revenues of almost 18B/year, they are a big company. I knew that, but I didn't know they built cars, and then I go to a dinner earlier in the week, I flip the plate, don't ask me why I do that, and here it is Tata again! The only company in the world to have had steady growth YOY for 130years, quite an achievement. They really have differentiators, for example every single employee in the company sign a code of conduct upon joining. In India since the marriages are fixed, it used to be that if your son was working at Tata his mother would have a much easier time finding him a wife. Tata was a family business, the kind of guys running it with the right attitude. One of the brothers or son I can't remember couldn't get a membership at the british club in Mumbai, because he wasn't british, so he built a hotel accross the street the Taj Mahal Hotel. The brit's club is long gone, the Taj Mahal is still going strong. Two very interesting facts, when the brothers dies they gave away the control of the company and the majority of its shares to a foundation. The company YOY gives 60% of its profit to charity.

Where are the canadian companies

At Nasscom leadership forum, one can meet with companies from all over the world. You have chinese, autralian, UK, US representatives. I haven't seen companies from Canada, France, Germany etc. Although I do know SAP has a large presence, just like Alcatel does, and CGI also back in Canada. It might be a situation where they have their own lab, versus partner labs. In the former less networking is doing once the lab is setup, while in the latter you always want to make sure you're dealing with the partner who is the best fit.

Thomas Friedman's at Nasscom's leadership forum

Well, his latest book, the world is flat, I thought really hit the nail on the head. He definitely surprised me by his speaking capabilities, he puts on a great show, and drives the point home very clearly and good humour. Here are some of my take aways.

The flat world is all about the 10 flatteners, you can find them in Wired. Out of those we're getting side effects like global platforms, corporation taking advantage of global platforms to drive efficiencies. This is how as a customer you pay to save money to the companies you're dealing with. For example by buying on the web you're actually saving the company money by helping them to have less staff to handle customers request in stores or over the phone. "You're paying to be an employee". In fact you're saving money as well, but without the connection of things, like web, offshore, availability of browsers this would just not be possible.

Then there is the 3b new people the global economy is about to swallow. This drives side effects like, the jobs will go where the talent is, and start thinking about green technologies before we burn this planet in less time takes to say it. Creativity, collaborators, synthetizers of information are the skills we will need in the flat world. They are the skills that will keep us from being outsourced, "one step ahead of the pac-man!" His equation cq + pq > iq, which stands for curiosity quotient + passion quotient is always greater than intellectual quotient. In other words it is a right brain world, "the left side is done somewhere in India cheaper". Make sure our kids learn how to learn, the school work place of tomorrow relationship is comparable to "training for the olympics but you have no idea what sports your training for!"

Nasscom - Leadership Forum

NASSCOM Events I will be at the leadership forum for the next couple of days. I'm using the show as an excuse to meet with our partners from India, and get to know them better. The show is promising to be very good, the keynote this afternoon is by Thomas Friedman himself, analyst in chief of Globalization, with the world is flat, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to know where we're headed. Stay tuned for more information.

65k usd for graduates ... in india!

It is raining cash, IITians never had it so good : HindustanTimes.com This means so many things to me. If graduate students are now starting to get this kind of money, this bolds very well for India development, but at the same time India is risking loosing traction in the global market place. They are building on their momentum, they won't be able to play the affordability card for long. The best card is talent availability, but still at this kind of price, some companies are going to start looking beyond India, Eastern Block comes to mind, but also China will feed from this kind of news. As for Canada, we're still higher, but I can see the 30% price difference getting smaller. This means that for short term engagement or high risk engagements, Canada is very well positionned to execute and deliver at a comparable price with less risks.