The long road to leadership We are caught in our own self-congratulations while losing opportunities for technology leadership BY RAJEEV NANDA Is India the next technology leader? Will we ever take on the US and ‘show them the way’, so to speak? For the last couple of years the media has been rife with reports about how India and China can take the lead from US, especially in hi-tech. At home in India, the media and the industry seem more bothered about if China will be the first or the second leader, assuming that the answer to my first question is a resounding ‘Yes’! Not so fast, I say. Let’s look closely to what really means to be a leader and then ask the question - do we have what it takes? The Dragon breathes fire It seems that we (India) have arrived! Not just arrived, but we seem to think that we have created enough lead from the rest of the world that we can now rest our laurels and the corporations of the world will line up at our doorsteps to have the privilege of outsourcing their call centers, development centers, testing centers, back-office operations and anything and everything to do with software and hi-tech to us! The attitude seems so prevalent that recent news articles on China taking an aggressive goal to overtake India in IT within next few years have evoked nothing more than a yawn as a response from our leaders, both political and industry. Not discounting our leadership in ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services), in reality, we are as far away from being considered a leader as a fish from the bicycle. Yes, we have marked our expertise in hi-tech and software, but does that translate to being a leader? Do we have the momentum and the will to take this lead to the next level? Do we even understand the reasons why we are here and how we achieved this position? I doubt it. We are so busy self-congratulating that it's difficult to get anyone's attention on the immediate threat to our lead in IT. Unfortunately, taking success as guaranteed will bring us the same level of disappointments as the high-flying dot-com investor of 1999 feels today. The reality is that not just China, but any nation that puts their mind and political will to it can overtake India in less than five years. To internalize and understand the threat, let's see what are our key strengths and differentiation factors from competing countries.   Key strengths: - Largest English speaking population - Large number of institutes that produce tech-savvy graduates - Low-cost region - Largest number of SEI-CMM & ISO certified companies Perceived strengths: - Education system with focus on math & sciences - Software development and analytical skills (a.k.a R&D) The question I ask is - are our strengths of our own making, other than the large population that all of us heartily participate in? English happened to be the common language we use because of India's diversity. If earlier governments had been successful in making Hindi as our national language we would have lost the single-most key element to our success. Here's one argument that can be used in favor of inefficiency of the government! A large percentage of our institutes happen to be private tuition centers like NIIT that focus on specific tools of the trade rather than understanding technology. Precisely for this reason, we see huge focus on processes and standards like SEI-CMM and ISO etc rather than having “quality” as a way of life. So, the simplest recipe for China to overtake India would be to open a large number of English teaching institutes along with inviting companies like NIIT to open shops in China. In less than three years, enough young talent in China would have been created to undercut India in cost and size! Extending further, the government can mandate teaching of SEI-CMM and ISO standards as part of curriculum to all technology institutes and last of our advantages will be lost in no time. Why is it that our industry and political leaders have not been able to spell out a strategy on how they intend to convert our lead in IT to a leadership position? The fact is no one can really spell out the reasons WHY we have the lead in the first place and what it really means to be a ‘leader’! This blind sight will lead to more mistakes and learning by trial and error than successes. So, here's my proposal. We need a multi-pronged strategy that focuses on creating the two most important skills required to not only create but also sustain leadership in technology and those are LEADERSHIP & INNOVATION. We need to create an environment - physical, psychological, social, educational and rewards that helps foster & promote these skills. Anything that can be learnt and duplicated - CMM, ISO, call centers, development centers, back-office operations - cannot provide leadership as you can bet on it that someone else can do it better and cheaper once the tricks of the trade are learnt. Let's milk these cash cows till the opportunity exists but then move on to something that will bring us to the front-office, R&D labs and product design and development. Then finally we need to aim for products out of India and not develop products for international organizations. That would be true leadership. So, let’s create the next Intel, Microsoft, Sun, and Google out of India rather than having their ODCs (off-shore development centers) in India. BY RAJEEV NANDA Ths is the first of a three part-series. Stay tuned for more (About the author: Rajeev is the author of e-verything.com: How to map out a viable e-strategy published by Tata McGraw-Hill. He can be reached at rajeev.nanda@indiatimes.com. Opinions expressed are his own )