Prakash Narayan

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Today

IIT2007 Global Conference
I spent this last weekend at an alumni reunion - IIT 2007 Global Conference. It was a fantastic event - with over 4000 people (including spouses and children) in attendance at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The attendees bonded on their interest in technology and how it can transform the world. The program featured a who's who in technorati and glitterati.

Jeff Immelt at the IIT2007 Global Conference

Jeff Immelt at the IIT2007 Global Conference

Jeff Immelt gave the opening keynote. He noted that GE employs 1500 IIT graduates. He mentioned that GE's $170b revenues come from:
o Infrastructure
o Emerging Markets
o Environmental Technologies
o Demographics - focus on Healthcare
o Digital Connections
He urged the audience to look at four vectors when considering what it will take to be a technical leader in the industry:
o Economics of scarcity (eg. consumption of energy is surpassing availability and production)
o Reshaping financials (eg. 70% of the healthcare dollar is being spent in diagnostics)
o Simplification (Using IT to improve workflow)
o Globalization (When building product, always think about the world market)
He mentioned a personal incident during his recent visit to India. He was reading Forbes magazine on the plane and it listed India's billionares. He thought he would impress his wife and turned to her and said, "You know, I do business with these guys - Premji, Ambani and Birla". It backfired when she responded, "What are you feeling so good about. I don't see you on any billionare list". He concluded saying that more important than money, title or power is to build something.

I tried to catch sessions on topics that I would not normally encounter on a day-to-day basis - such as energy strategies for the future.

Senator Hillary Clinton had a keynote session later in the day on Friday. Unfortunately, she could not appear in person. She tried to cover it up saying, "It is appropriate that I appear via a satellite feed to a conference that is focused on transforming the world through technology."

Arun Sarin at the IIT 2007 Global Confernece

Arun Sarin at the IIT 2007 Global Confernece

Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, an alumnus of IIT Bombay, gave the keynote on Saturday. Vodafone has a $200b market cap and has 40% margins. He touched on three topics in his talk:

IIT and leadership. He started his talk by kicking the audience in their pants! He talked about the importance of leadership and the resulting ability to do good to others. He was disappointed, however, in not seeing sufficient people rising to the rank of CEO. He noted Rajat Gupta, Umang Gupta, Ujjal Kohli and Suhas Patil as the exceptions. The important tenets, he said, are to be Strategic - have a clear view of what you want to accomplish; Operational - the ability to set goals and meet goals and People - the ability to make ordinary people do extraordinary things
Communications. He sees a trend in services convergence - where providers are bringing their experience in internet and entertainment to the mobile world.
Globalization. He talked about Vodafone's recent acquisition of Hutch - a large mobile provider in India. Since he was competing with other, large, Indian players, he talked a bit about his experiences in doing business with India. He was disappointed, he said, that things happened outside the normal business processes to influence the decisions. In order for India to succeed it needs Transparency, Infrastructure, Capital and Talent.

Venkat Krishnamurthy, Javed Akthar, Chitra Bannerjee, Harish Saluja and Shekhar Kapur

I attended a session on Harnessing Creativity that had Indian Poet Javed Akthar, Author Chitra Bannerjee, Film Director Shekhar Kapur, Academy Award winner Venkat Krishnamurthy on the panel. It was a fascinating to hear the source of creativity for these extremely talented folks.

Alex Filippenko, George Smoot and Arno Penzias

Alex Filippenko, George Smoot and Arno Penzias

I also attended a Nobel Laureates Panel with Arno Penzias and George Smoot. The panel was moderated by Alex Filippenko of UC Berkeley. They talked about the State of Cosmology. In fact, our knowledge of the Universe is only on the 4% that we know - made from protons and neutrons.

The evening concluded with a scintiallating musical concert from the doyens of Indian Classical music, including vocals by Pandit Jasraj, flute by Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Mandolin by U Srinivas and percussions by Vijay Ghate (tabla), Vikku Vinayakaram (ghatam) and Selvaganesh (kanjira). Through poetry and sound they brought out the true meaning of India's national flag.