Gagan Kaul Blog

Tom Peters writes a lot of interesting stuff on his blog; and as much as I enjoyed his book, Circle of Innovation, I love the random thoughts and his management insights. He has recently come up with a white paper called Project’05, in which he talks about Infosys and how it is his favourite Professional Services Firm (PSF). A long-time proponent of firms adopting the PSF model, he gives an interesting insight into the company. This is what he writes:

These guys are amazing! Their Quest for Talent is Limitless! Their quest for … AWESOME VALUE ADDED … is Limitless. A McKinsey mentor urged me to pay attention to Annual Reports. “It’s one of the few things,” he said, “that the CEO really puts his Heart & Soul into.” So I’ve always taken him at his word, mostly to my benefit. Now I want to provide a short excerpt from the “Chairman’s Letter” in the Infosys Annual Report 2003. The … extraordinary Narayana Murthy … talks about what Professional Service Firms can be. In short: GAME–CHANGERS!

So here’s the quote from Chairman M: “By making the Global Delivery Model [Infosys’ prime product/promise] both legitimate and mainstream, we have brought the battle to our territory. That is, after all, the purpose of strategy. We have become the leaders, and incumbents [IBM, Accenture] are followers, forever playing catch-up. However, creating a new ‘business innovation’ is not enough for rules to be changed. The innovation must impact clients, competitors, investors, and society. We have seen all this in spades. Clients have embraced the Model and are demanding it in ever greater measure. The acuteness of their circumstances, coupled with the capability and the value of our solution, has made the choice not a choice. Competitors have been dragged, kicking and screaming, to replicate what we do. They face trauma and disruption, but the game has changed forever. Investors have grasped that this is not a passing fancy, but a potential restructuring of the way the world operates and how value will be created in the future.”