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Making businesses sustainable in tough economic times

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: HCL Technologies Ltd (HCL), a global leader in IT services, will host its fourth-annual Global Meet- Unstructure 2008 in Orlando, Florida from November 16-18. Unstructure is a thought leadership forum including a physical event, an online forum, and an annual compendium of thoughts.  Designed to be an open, flexible platform for business professionals, technologists and contemporary thought leaders to discuss and debate action-oriented ideas that aid the evolution of business.

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As the economic slowdown takes center stage, businesses are experiencing newer challenges. The action ideas from these discussions will help organizations and practitioners to reinvent their strategies for sustaining growth, addressing the most important question in today’s times: How do we respond to global slowdown?

The two-day event in Florida will bring together over 500 visionaries and thought leaders including CXOs from Fortune 1000 organizations to discuss the most pressing issues relating to the sustainability of business and the “co-evolution” of business and the environment, especially in today’s challenging environment.

The event will feature keynotes from industry luminaries such as former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Management Guru Gary Hamel and Xerox Corporation, Anne Mulcahy, chairman and CEO, and includes informative sessions hosted by thought leaders from some of the most respected organizations around the world. The event will also have unique thought-provoking “Mentor speak” sessions, which are expert opinions on the most relevant topics that will help organizations become more sustainable in today’s times.

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Throughout the physical event, HCL will hold informative breakout sessions discussing its five fundamental strategic responses to the current economic climate, including:

Aligning IT to Business: Major shifts in global economy, disruptive technology innovations, new IT service models and people practices are creating unprecedented opportunities and challenges for IT to deliver to business. How should IT align to the changing dynamics of business? How can IT’s impact to business be measured and managed? HCL will launch its “Blue Ocean IT service model” that will help sustain the balance between business and IT.

Taking Advantage of Emerging Markets: There has been increasing focus in recent years on the opportunities and challenges posed by emerging market economies to the established economies. Companies today will require different approaches to R&D, supply chain, manufacturing and the entire front office. How should global businesses respond to the unique opportunities that open up with the emerging markets taking center stage?

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Unlocking and Monetizing Innovation: The new competitive world has placed demands on intensity in innovation, that companies - large and small - find very difficult to satisfy through their existing ecosystems. Where can customers turn to today, as sources of disruptive innovation? How can you enhance and monetize innovation in an ecosystem?

Creating a Lean Business: Lean principles applied to manufacturing today have resulted in tremendous efficiencies without sacrificing quality and superior market positions for their proponents. IT organizations within large companies have reached a scale of operations and complexity similar to that of manufacturing resulting in misutilized computing power, wasted software spending, reduction in quality of infrastructure support and general inconsistencies in performance that would never be accepted in the manufacturing organization. With pressure to reduce IT spending at an all time high, is “Lean IT” a viable concept to maximize efficiency and ROI?

Aligning Employees with Business: Employees are individuals first, and individuals are driven and motivated by a far greater set of factors than just the goals set for them by their employer. These motivations vary according to each individual – and in some cases are at cross purposes with the objectives of their roles or the objectives of the organization. How do you align employee self interest and awareness with the business? How do you get every single employee to impact customer experience? Can the true innovation potential of your employees, only be unlocked outside the ambit of their job?

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The output of the event will be the Unstructure White Book, a compendium of insight and action ideas collected for businesses to use as an “Evolution” manifesto.

“The success of the last Global Meet inspired us to evolve into the more powerful format of ’Unstructure’ where we aim to drive industry conversation around important topics that are on the minds of business leaders today,” said HCL Technologies’ CEO Vineet Nayar. “This year’s summit promises to be even more valuable for conference and online participants, as the free-flowing debates will focus on creating actionable ideas for organizations to reinvent themselves to sustain growth.”

The HCL Global Meet, Unstructure will be a carbon neutral event. HCL will offset 100 percent of carbon emissions generated during the event by purchasing carbon credits, split equally into carbon offsets of Reforestation, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.