‘Innovation has to be brought to whatever we do’

Infosys CEO and MD Vishal Sikka has completed nearly six months in office since he took over the troubled IT software services company. In an interview with BusinessLine, Sikka shared his vision for Infosys and how he expects innovation to be key to the company’s success. Edited excerpts:

You had said earlier that you want Infosys to be an innovative company but it is still seen as a commodity player. How will you change this perception?

You have just articulated my argument as well as my pain. This is precisely what has been going on in the industry.

If you think about this strictly, mathematically or logically, this road goes to only one place. We have reached a point where we are all just providing clients with people of certain skills, at a certain cost within a certain time period. This will only take us on a downward spiral: hiring people faster, jamming them into projects, hiring them cheaper and charging less and less for them. This has to stop.

By when do you think Infosys will come out with the next big innovation after Finacle?

New products are not the only way to innovate. Innovation has to be brought to whatever we do. In my holiday message, I told the employees that each one of them has to find a couple of things that we do today and make them better and a couple of new ways in which we can do the same things.

We want to proactively work with clients, identify areas of innovation and opportunities relevant to them.

I believe the next great platform technology will be based around open-source components and assembling these. Towards this, we have the Infosys Information Platform, on which we have 56 projects with clients.

What are your clients telling you? How do you balance ‘today’ with the ‘future’?

On my first day in office, somebody asked the same question. I told him that without the future we are just grinders and without ‘today’, we are just dreamers. We have to do both. We cannot abandon today’s business. We have a huge machine running and we have to non-disruptively bring renewal to everything we do today.

Internally, we have certain goals to improve every service line we are working on through the power of automation.

Do you think your R&D spend is adequate? Worldwide, innovative companies spend around 10 per cent of revenue on R&D...

My view on that is entirely different. You really do not need a lot of money to carry out R&D. The research group at Xerox PARC, which chief scientist Allan Kay used to head, created tens of trillions of dollars in wealth in today's terms.

So, that kind of research can be done by a very small group of distinguished people. This year, we are opening a design innovation centre in Silicon Valley, where client teams will sit with us. Ten customers will be present initially. The centre will have 100 people from client firms and 10-15 people from our side.

What leadership style do you bring to Infosys that will take it to the next level in IT outsourcing?

I feel uncomfortable describing my leadership style.

I am always curious and I like to hang out with people who are curious, who are re-thinking things and asking unusual questions.

I am grounded in reality and do not like to get caught up with big words and power-point presentations. My leadership style is being informal, curious and engaging.

You brought in many initiatives to bring back those who had left Infosys. How many have returned?

Attrition and employee engagement are not about rewards and incentives. There are lots of tactical reasons and things that have to be fixed and we are fixing them. Salary is a big part of that. To me, employee engagement is mainly about whether we are inspiring people; are we creating a culture of doing things that we find motivating? Once you do that, people don’t think about the number of hours they are spending at work.

Infosys has been talking about acquisitions. Will you, at some time, look at acquiring a product company?

Yes. I have no interest in buying yesterday’s technology or padding up our revenue by buying companies that are doing the same kind of work that we are. We are interested in acquiring companies that help us in automation and artificial intelligence to help renew our services and give us that jolt of innovation to improve our productivity; in companies that bring some new capabilities or new skills to our company.

Also read: Sikka pushes for innovation from the grassroots

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