Seeds of future, already

MUMBAI, INDIA: They say breakfast like a king. The Nasscom Leadership Forum 2013 ensured that regimen with a refreshing and strong tone set with the first two sessions here.

When Anand Sharma, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, minced no words in saying that India will keep exploring global opportunities but without compromising on words like level-playing field and fair chances at negotiating tables; it made for the just the right starting posture at this three-day business and IT summit.

He emphasised that India will definitely not compromise on recognition and respect for data integrity and security when signing global IT deals.

With India's stance clear and confident, it was time to have a quick but refreshing peek into the future. Enters Futurist Mike Walsh, who told, in his signature entertaining panache, that innovation is still about human beings and that futuristic ways will shift from sterile R&D labs to messy, disruptive ideas.

Mike Walsh is the CEO of innovation research lab Tomorrow and the author of FUTURETAINMENT that also won an Art Director's Club award in NYC for design.

Illustrating how the next generating is leaping forth across conventional boundaries, he talked of how The real Arab Spring is witnessing new and maverick technology usage by the young generation.

"When the young men and women, who use BB pins in their car window displays or throw pre-paid phones at prospective dates passing by in other cars, it's time we know that technology is more than what we think. If a bar in New York finds people using a military-grade face recognition software to scan the male-female ratios, numbers etc around; we again know that times are undergoing disruptive approaches.'

Iterating the maxim of David Ogilvy in the tech-era, Walsh underlined - "The consumer is not a statistic, they are your kids."

That's where he also advised companies to go beyond the 'engineer' mindset and embrace the 'experiment' side. "Recruit kids as alpha users and not just your techies and marketers. The future belongs to Flex-firms which would be companies that compete not on their distribution or services alone but on their networks and connected platforms that can allow collaboration between consumers, partners, suppliers etc."

The market is changing but 'the future sees you now' as he reminded. The new generation, specially young folks born after 2007 will have a completely different way with everything, he added. "We need to understand their demands. We need to also see how technology, when it reaches a certain level of sophistication, actually disappears. We need to design our offices so that people would want to come there even on a day off. That means more social spaces and lesser desks."