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Innovation in America: Vibrant and Strong!

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DQI Bureau
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Leading a Nasscom delegation to the US is always fun and an

enriching experiencedelegates get different perspectives from domain experts

widely ranging from large software companies to younger successful niche players

to entrepreneurial startups. The exhibition and conference titled "Software

2007", which was organized by the exuberant techie-turned organizer and

host MR Rangaswami, attracted thousands of geeks, analysts, and a veritable whos

who of keynote speakersSteve Ballmer, and Hasso Plattner Eric Zander to name

a few. And, their words of wisdom and insights into the future were truly worth

traveling all those miles.

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While the average Indian techie may be superior in capability to

the average American, the thought leaders of the American software industry are

so advanced in their thinking that there is still much to learn at the

fountainhead of new technology knowledge. And, this does not happen by accidentthere

is a carefully cultivated and well-nurtured industry eco-system that facilitates

the development of symbiotic relationships between angels and venture

capitalists, academic institutions, entrepreneurial firms, and larger

corporations. The Software Development Forum in San Jose is a true role model

worth emulating by the Indian Innovation community!

What

makes Google such a great company is the belief that they are truly

redefining the frontiers of human knowledge and capability

A living example of this is young Nividita Ojha, a young woman

from my home state, Bihar, who has bootstrapped an exciting company in the

wireless space with technical support from a couple of youngsters in IIT Bombay.

And, possibly in a different league today, but very much a similar story of a

few years ago, is todays stock market darling, Google.

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The day our delegation visited Google was also the day the

campus had rolled out the red carpet for its shareholder community. Co-founder

Larry Page said that the goal of the company is to produce a search engine that

understands what you want before you type it. No wonder then that Googles

share of the search market grew to a staggering 65% in the US in the month of

April, and no wonder too that CEO Eric Schmidt said, commenting on the buzz

around the potential Microsoft-Yahoo merger, "It would change the

competitive dynamic, but it wouldnt cause us to do anything different."

Quite true, if one sees the decline in market share of Hotmail, post Sabeer

Bhatia, and the rather knowing look that some of the Google management gave us

when asked about the possibility of a Google OS and Google Web browser hitting

the market in the not so distant future!

The Nasscom delegation had an opportunity to see the best of

breed new developments: SAP, Microsoft, and Intel, and the four-day agenda was

truly rewarding for the group. Innovation truly flourishes in India, not just at

the top, but also throughout the length and depth of the industry pyramid, and

the associations efforts through the years to nurture new ideas and companies

have paid rich dividends. The next step is to unleash the power of individuals

and build a truly collaborative workspace for the developer community.

To end this column with an anecdote, our bus lost its way a

little on the way to Google, leading to a wisecrack"everybody knows how

to google for search, but how do we search for Google?" No shortage of wit

in this industry!

The author is deputy chairman & MD of Zensar Technologies

and the vice chairman of Nasscom.



He can be reached at ganesh@cybermedia.co.in

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