Skilling for the digital future with Anant Maheshwari

Mr Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd deliberating on ‘Skilling For The Digital Future’ at AIMA LeaderSpeak session

Every industry, every company, all of us have become more digital. Just to take a personal example imagine and remember what you were doing five to ten years back and your life today as an individual and as a professional and the number of skills that you have intuitively picked up over time in driving your own work today.

The big question around tech adoption is basically what platforms you use and how much do you use of those platforms? So if you ask how we think about tech platforms today, there are a lot of platforms available to simple ones that you use daily like social chat applications, maps, search that you use on the internet or it could be some applications that you use for your productivity or even to track weather data or any other news.

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Proactive thinking is critical in a downturn

This article by Sanjay Kirloskar, President, AIMA was published in ‘The Hindu Business Line’ on 26th October 2019.

Sanjay Kirloskar, President, AIMA

Managing business has only gotten tougher, as the domestic economic slowdown has added to the challenge of technological and trade disruptions. India’s economy has been slipping for a few quarters, and expectations for the future are tinged with Worry. Quite a few sectors are feeling the pinch, and it has become a challenge to achieve growth or even sustain performance. However, bad times are good for house-cleaning and reorganisation. The pressure to survive can be used to become fit for growth.

It is instinctive to retreat into a shell now, but it is not a safe option with the business environment changing fast. A scramble to save money only fulfils the prophecy of doom. Worse, it damages the organisation’s vitals. As Warren Buffet said: “When others are fearful, be greedy”.

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Future Proofing Yourself – Catherine Wolfram addressing AIMA

Catherine Wolfram, Acting Associate Dean & Prof of Business Administration, Haas School of Business talking about Mentorship and Future Proofing Yourself at AIMA’s women-centric programme, PRAGATI 2019. Excerpts –

Catherine Wolfram, Acting Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration at Haas School of Business, University of California- Berkeley

I wanted to start by giving a little background on myself and then share a couple lessons. I’m an economist, I earned a PhD and I’ve been a professor for over 20 years. My research focus is on energy and I’ve done several projects in India, although much to my great regret I don’t have a current project ongoing in India. I’m moving into the role of associate dean which is about as close in academics as you get, to being in a management position. In general, academicians are kind of single-minded and they don’t have much taste for being managed. It’s a very non-hierarchical environment, but as I said the associate dean is kind of as close to management as you get. I wanted to share my experiences, though I know that since I’ve been in the US and I’ve been in academics and not in business my experiences have been different from yours, but I think there’s still some general lessons that I can share.

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Pole-vault in the age of disruption – Nandan Nilekani at AIMA

Nandan Nilekani, Co-Founder, Infosys & the catalyst of digitisation in India, addressing AIMA’s 63rd Foundation Day 2019. Read Excerpts –

Nandan Nilekani addressing AIMA’s 63rd Foundation Day.

I think the topic – Innovation in the age of disruption – is very important. We tend to think that innovation is about 23-year olds wearing hoodies doing things, but in some sense, the innovation in India is happening by everybody at all levels. Innovation can happen in the private sector, the public sector, whether you are young, whether you are old, it really doesn’t matter. It is really the mindset of bringing new ideas into play. Ideas are really what makes a difference, and if you are able to get your ideas and get them embedded in the system, then anything can happen.

Innovation can come from anyone whether they are incumbents, challengers, young or old, in the private sector or in government; and I think that’s the spirit in which we need to think of innovation in this age of disruption because clearly disruption is a given, the velocity of change is unprecedented. Technology and many things are causing velocity, that we have never seen before, the knowledge accumulation is happening at a phenomenal pace, more knowledge was created in the last six months then the previous thousands of years, we are seeing the rise of data in unprecedented ways, we’re seeing companies accumulate huge amounts of data, thanks to smartphones they are using more data and tomorrow as we sensorize the world as every device every car everything has a sensor, then the data is going to be even further bigger than what it is today.

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Creating New Global Order based on Peace & Compassion

Sri Sri Ravishankar, Spiritual Leader and Founder, The Art of Living Foundation addressing AIMA’s 45th National Management Convention 2018 and sharing his views on how to create a New Global Order Based on Compassion, Trust and Peace. Read Excerpts:

Sri Sri Ravishankar addressing AIMA’s 45th National Management Convention.

The word silence and listen has the same letters, just a little rearrangement from this side to that side. In today’s world, with such chaos, there are few listeners but many talkers. What we need to do today, first of all, is to cultivate the habit of listening to the other person. Listening to a different point of views, different opinions. Every day when you switch on your television at 9 in the evening, you can see how so many people talk simultaneously, and there’s hardly anyone to listen. This is the world that we are in. Today we think too much. 90% of the stress comes from overthinking. Can we take a few moments of silence and look at any incident with a clear mind. If we can create this habit, we can resolve many conflicts that we face in our lives. I know Sudhir Jalan ji for a long time. As Sudhir used to say how can businessman be quiet, Gurudev? I said, well, at least when he’s watching the stock market, the moment he’s quiet, he doesn’t want to be disturbed and has to watch what is happening. So this attitude to listen to others point of view is essential.

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Sanjeev Sanyal on Reconfiguring Indian Economy

Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Adviser, Government of India in conversation with Ms Supriya Shrinate, Executive Editor – News, ET Now on ‘Reconfiguring Economy: Coding a New Growth Algorithm: Reconfiguring the Economy’ at AIMA’s 4th National Leadership Conclave 2018.

Sanjeev Sanyal in conversation with Supriya Shrinate

The world is seeing a potential trade war in the making, do you believe those fears are for real? Do you believe India will have to take sides on this one, we can’t be a mute spectator?

As far as taking sides is concerned, I’m very clear on whose side we are on. We’re on India’s side. Coming to the question of protectionism and the emerging global scenario. Let me be clear while indeed there are all kinds of protectionist tendencies popping up around the world, we in India remain committed to the globalized system, we are old experimenters in import substitution so our own history should more than adequately tell us that if we overdo import substitution or isolationist policies it always ends in tears. So while it is fair that occasionally you use some sorts of incentives to protect certain industries from dumping or maybe even do some protection for infant industries. Different countries have their own dynamics but in general we do need an open globalized system and in the end, we have to be willing to do deals with the rest of the world and the rest of the world has to be willing to do deals with us. But yes, the old system as it seems may have come to its grinding halt and let’s not blame the individual political leaders. My view is that the old system has come to a creaking halt at multiple levels. In the US there has been a simmering discontent about Chinese imports for a while, the fact of the matter is that it has come to a halt now.

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Happiness is natural and stress is a disease

Brahmakumari Sister Shivani, Spiritual & Motivational Teacher addressing AIMA’s 4th National Leadership Conclave 2018 on the theme ‘Leading Self to be Innovative, Inclusive & Invincible’. Read Excerpts:

Brahmakumari Sister Shivani addressing AIMA’s 4th National Leadership Conclave

Last week in the Times of India, There was a proposal by the Government of Delhi saying that they want to introduce a subject called ‘Happiness’ in every Government school in Delhi, and they had asked proposals from NGOs and spiritual organisations to submit a curriculum that they would like to execute for school children in a subject called ‘happiness’. Most of us must have seen that page, but did we pause to reflect where are we heading? Our children have to have a subject called happiness because what they’re experiencing today is something different from happiness.

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WhatsApp and Google are Front-ending India’s UPI

Arvind Gupta, CEO, MyGov addressing on the theme ‘Reimagining the State: Government as Service’ at AIMA’s 4th National Leadership Conclave 2018. Read Excerpts –

Arvind Gupta, CEO, MyGov addressing AIMA’s 4th National Leadership Conclave

The whole concept of Government as a service is very new especially in a vast country like India, the learning from countries like Estonia with 1.3 million people and a few more million in Singapore are vast. But you know their digitization came before they tried to leapfrog into fourth industrial revolution. India didn’t have a choice, we are doing digitization and we are leaping into the fourth industrial revolution parallelly and in that parallel universe we have a citizen who is still not connected to the internet probably, has a basic mobile phone, lives in a remote corner of northeast, Rajasthan, Jammu & Kashmir or in Kerela but what has connected all of them is this unique thing that we talk about, Aadhar. Today almost 99% of the adult population has Aadhar. Now we can keep debating its issues on the privacy and the security and that’s in the national interest and that’s the right thing to do but it is really enabling us to deliver the government as a service.

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Winning in the Age of Disruption – C P Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra

C P Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra shares his insights on Winning in the Age of Disruption at AIMA’s 4th National Leadership Conclave 2018. Read Excerpts below –

C P Gurnani at AIMA’s NLC

We believe in the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh where. Brahma is the creator, Vishnu is the sustenance and Mahesh (Shiva) is the destroyer. Now if the disruption is inevitable and it’s going to change the world. The question is who is going to be the creator? Will it be the millennials or startups or some of the larger companies re-inventing themselves? What is the role of the disruptor, what is the role of that Vishnu as a sustenance man or are these roles overstated? Maybe these roles don’t exist anymore. Maybe if I take Tech Mahindra as an example I mean I would strongly go back after this presentation and tell my Board that you should actually collapse all the three roles.

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Nandan Nilekani explains how India is going Digital

Nandan Nilekani, Non-Executive Chairman, Infosys and the chief architect of Aadhaar shares how India is going digital and transforming into a Post Paid Economy using Data at AIMA’s 62nd Foundation Day 2018. Excerpts –

Nandan Nilekani, Non-Executive Chairman, Infosys Ltd., speaking on ‘Disrupting the Disrupter’ at the AIMA’s 62nd FoundationDay

Today I’ll speak about ‘Disrupting the Disruptor: Finding the next Big Idea’ and I’ll try to give you an idea of what’s happening in India in the world of digital technology, and why is it so special and so unique and why it has such a big impact on our business.

I will talk about three fundamental trends and I would put the facts and figures at your disposal on how India is becoming digital, which means it is becoming paperless and cashless; how is GST becoming business compliant and why is it so strategic for the economy, what’s the impact of that; and what is the role of data in India’s future because data is the most strategic asset of the 21st century. Today, huge battles are being fought all over the world for data. The big issue is the rise of the internet Giants who have huge amounts of data and on that data, they are able to apply AI and keep getting better. So fundamentally what is India’s strategy in terms of data to be a powerful country in the age of data and AI and machine learning?
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Author Archives: Team AIMA

Skilling for the digital future with Anant Maheshwari

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Proactive thinking is critical in a downturn

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Future Proofing Yourself – Catherine Wolfram addressing AIMA

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Pole-vault in the age of disruption – Nandan Nilekani at AIMA

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Creating New Global Order based on Peace & Compassion

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Sanjeev Sanyal on Reconfiguring Indian Economy

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Happiness is natural and stress is a disease

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WhatsApp and Google are Front-ending India’s UPI

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Winning in the Age of Disruption – C P Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra

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Nandan Nilekani explains how India is going Digital

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