Vishal Sikka, the new Infosys CEO, wants all of us to embark on a human revolution

Digital transformation is reshaping the business of every one of our clients. Our strategy is to apply the same principles to our own business in order to capture this opportunity and accelerate our growth within our culture of lifelong learning and purposeful work.

With the announcement of the quarterly results where Infosys witnessed a 4.5% QoQ growth in revenues and a 7.3% QoQ growth in net profits, Dr Vishal Sikka knows he’s on the right track and so is his company.

When he was appointed Infosys CEO in June 2014, the board expected him to do a Lou Gerstner, the man who reinvented IBM. It was crucial, especially after Narayan Murthy was unable to do a Steve Jobs in his second coming. 100 days down, Sikka sees many new perspectives in IT, and wants everyone to be part of the human revolution of innovation, which certainly is the need of the hour.

Speaking at the maiden edition of CeBIT-India, the Infosys CEO shared his thoughts on software and the future of the services industry. Here are the things shaping up to define the future according to Sikka:

The transformation from ‘atoms’ to ‘bits’ world

ToSikka, the world around us is shaped by software and IT. The book ‘Being Digital’ by Nicholas Negroponte talks about “how our world is witnessing the shift from atoms to bits as its fundamental particle.”This transformation is in all walks of life. The author also debates on how this phenomenon is irrevocable and growing at an exponential rate.

He says,

The burden of interaction today has been placed totally on the shoulders of the human party. This will change. Talking, pointing and looking should work together as part of a multi-modal interface that is less about messaging back and forth and more like face-to-face, human-to-human conversation. In the same way that it is the atomic element of information, pixel (picture and element) is the molecular level of graphics (represented by more than one bit). A bit has no colour, size or weight, and it can travel at the speed of light.

The new world powered by software and IT empowers people at the end point, and is responsible for increasing their capability to make decisions and for intelligent behaviour.

100^th day as CEO and the tale of two citiesEx-CTO of SAP, Sikka divides the IT world into two parts. The first one presents a great opportunity to help accelerate and reshape the world through software. The other one is a depressing reality the industry is witnessing in a downward spiral fall, primarily because of hiring people from mediocre places for low costs. This is accompanied by less training.

Sikka feels the job can be better done by working together with clients; labour arbitrage and staff augmentation is not good. He says,

We can be better strategic partners through innovation, design thinking and new agile methodologies, and show how to solve a problem. We need to do more with less for more. Future world is looking towards India for leading by example and not the cheaper solutions, now.

What’s new at Infosys

1. Partnerships: IT is going through some fundamental changes. With new limits of elasticity and new capabilities in infrastructure, we can build new kinds of systems. Infosys has partnered with market leaders like Hitachi, Amazon, Microsoft and Huawei to enable this thought process.
2. Infosys Information Platform: There’s no denial of the fact that we’re living in a platform world where more and more lives are governed by software. Infosys has built an open source platform that serves the need of enterprises through numerous connectors, algorithms and visualization options. Currently, there are 40 clients and dozens of projects on the platform.
3. Apps: According to Sikka, the onshore-offshore IT model will be replaced by the best place solution model soon. A whole collection of apps per industry for all industries that have not been built will get into the picture.

It’s very clear that Infosys is heading towards building new ambient, predictive and proactive capabilities to strengthen themselves and the IT & services sector as a whole.

The world needs more entrepreneurs

Unlike the majority of population, entrepreneurs trust in “believing and seeing” and not in “seeing and believing.”Sikka believes it’s high time all of us get into the former mindset. He says,

We’re meekly following orders while we should be boldly giving suggestions for what to do better and seeking opportunities to do so.

He remembered the time when he was four years old and India was just witnessing the green revolution. The green revolution led by M S Swaminathan, not only made us self-sufficient, but with the increased productivity, we were able to reach a place where we’re now as one of the largest exporters of majority of food across the globe. Emphasizing on the need to have a similar revolution, but this time focused on innovation, Sikka says,

We need to embark on a human revolution. A revolution where our reality is not replaced by drones (or any other gadget) but augmented by technology to do better.

What do you think about Dr Vishal SIkka's philosophy and future plans? Let us know in your comments below.