Arent there enough lists already? Why another? That was the first question that greeted us, when a few of us excitedly started narrating the idea to some colleagues in our marketing department. And, it was a very spontaneous response. Not a great compliment sure, but it made us think. No matter how excited you are about the uniqueness of your work, you can expect the fair share of this scepticism. And unless you settle that, it is indeed yet another list. A list is a list is a list.
That is why this a mechanical part that often goes as a box in small print, in these kind of works, with titles How We Did It or very often simply Methodology, comes right at the top. If you can appreciate it, we are fairly hopeful you will appreciate the entire work.
It is yet another list of successful Indians abroad-that you keep seeing everywhere, both Indian and non-Indian magazines, websites and television. A general interest magazine would cover people from all walks of life; a Forbes or Fortune would restrict it to business; and it is but natural that Dataquest would restrict it to technology, which, by the way, accounts for a big chunk of any such list.
But beyond that, what?
Honestly, it did not start that way. We started from the opposite end. We were trying to compile a list of people who are shaping up the technology business today-beyond the first generation successful entrepreneurs, CEO and visionaries: High profile CEOs from IBM and HP or founders such Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Larry Page.
But two things happened. We found that it was an exercise that was a little too big for us to do anything meaningful out of it. But more than that, we discovered that many of those people who occupy the most important positions, where they can influence, where technology heads in the next few years are Indians. It is not just senior positions. You can be the CFO or head the most important geography for your company and can do great things for your company. But influencing technology business globally is a completely different matter.
But then, you can be in charge of building the technology roadmap for the most well-known enterprise software company. Such as Vishal Sikka, the first-ever CTO of SAP. Or Thomas Kurian, in charge of product roadmap of Oracle, the company with broadest range of software-and now hardware-
products. And then, there is the low profile president at Microsoft, who is driving Microsofts most important future bet-cloud, in the form of Satya Nadella. Someone about whom not too much is known to many in Microsoft India, outside his division.
In fact, it is this discovery that aroused the Indianness within us. And the idea of this list was born. So, it is not celebration of Indians that we started with. That was the end result. But once we zeroed in on the influencing part, how could we have ignored a gentleman whose words are followed in Twitter by some of these big executives themselves. Such as Om Malik. And those who are doing the same, but not exactly in public glare-such as Dilip Wagle of McKinsey.
So, we tweaked it a bit. And the moment the influencing and Indian parts were juxtaposed, how could you ignore some just because they are already CEOs? Of course, we looked at only those CEOs who are in charge of companies that are uniquely positioned to influence how technology business evolves, such as Adobe or Motorola Mobility.
And we have a list of 20 such people.
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