MUMBAI, INDIA: Finally some plain talking and very straightforward answers to pressing queries of the delegates at NASSCOM India Leadership Forum today.

And, not surprisingly, the answers came from a person not directly related to industry.

Pankaj Ghemawat, author of ‘redefining global strategy’ and the youngest professor ever to teach at Harvard University, said the IT industry has to share some blame for not moving fast enough in good times and not focusing enough on improving productivity of employees.

Ghemawat also scoffed at the idea that recessionary times will translate opportunity for Indian IT as it will force companies to look at technology as a Saviour to bail them out of bad times.

‘I often give this example of famine-stricken Spanish people asked to grow more potatoes to come out of famine. It just doesn’t work out. If capital is all-time low, investments will also be low, no matter how important industry are you in working for.”

Outlook looks to be bad

Ghemawat termed the outlook for Indian IT industry as pretty bad and said Industry needed to work hardest since its inception.

“People say they have come out of dot com bust. That time the effect was more narrow. And you had Y2K driving investments at that time.... Again, IT industry was not exposed to clients that they are exposed today, so expectations are more,” he adds.

Giving statistics, Ghemawat said the market figures were the same as they were way back in 2004.

“For too long we have not worked on focusing on improving revenues per employees.”

However, Ghemawat added that for Indian IT industry, there were many positive things which can help it to turn the corner.

“The cost of growing engineers is among the lowest in world. Add to that India being a low cost player will help industry in good stead. But challenge is not to survive the meltdown but how to thrive the recession.”

Ghemawat gave an eight-point detailed agenda to the IT industry to come out of the recession.

Reshape, don’t just retrench

IT companies which go for layoffs and blanket ban on recruitment are pursuing a wrong strategy, opined Ghemawat.

“It creates a feeling of mistrust among employees which percolates down to the students who don’t see IT industry as a safe bet for their future, which essentially means you will not get not get quality talent in the near future.”

Ghemawat also added moratorium on trainings and developments also didn’t serve any purpose.

The Harvard professor added that recession provided an opportune opportunity for IT companies to rebuild the organization in terms of People development, IT and management systems rehaul.

He also urged the industry to work together to dilute then bad reputations that IT industry’ has to suffer because of Satyam episode.

“For many US companies, Satyam episode is not a one-off episode, but extension of any Indian IT company,” he said.

Ghemawat, while praising the ethics committee formed by NASSCOM to save against Satyam-like disasters happenings in on futures, however, urged companies not to engage what he termed as “collective striptease”.

“You don’t need to divulge all the details to your customers, which you think can hand over competitive advantage to your customers.”

He also urged industry to form a joint mechanism to fight protectionism.

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