BPO Whiners! Wake Up And Smell Coffee

MUMBAI: Here's a big piece of advice for those in America still caught up in the outsourcing din and the loss of jobs to Indian, Malaysian and Filipino professionals - wake up and smell the coffee. That's shooting straight from the hip by the legendary Andy Grove, the man who's taken Intel from a small memory chip company to a global microprocessor giant.

"It's going to change untold millions of lives in India and the US because it's going to bring compebreastion on a scale and in areas that never existed before," says Mr Grove. "It's just a lot bigger than any of us can understand today." Outsourcing is just the tip of the iceberg in a much larger change that's sweeping across the world, where more people from countries outside the US are entering and participating in the global marketplace.

A week after stepping down on May 18 as chairman, Andy Grove, who towers over the global computing landscape, spoke exclusively to ET about the world of business, outsourcing, and everything else. Before you download the chip-meister in Corporate Dossier, June 3, here's the demo version. Mr Grove, who co-founded Intel with Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, warns that our world is about to turn upside down and the way we do business will change forever.

No stranger to dealing with transition himself during his 37-year history with Intel, Mr Grove believes that America is still not recognising the extent of the shift that's taking place today, thereby missing the wood for the trees. "The US is going to have a pretty hard time when it has to deal with compebreastion from untold number of emerging technologies from around the world. This is a strategic inflection point for the country and I think it's going to change commerce and change economics."

Mr Grove introduced the term "strategic inflection point" in his 1996 bestseller, Only The Paranoid Survive, depicting a phase in the life of an organisation when the fundamental rules of doing business are dramatically changed.

"Be alert for these changes because it's one of those real things. The earlier you act on it, the more you will be able to control your own destiny," says the man who was voted the most influential business leader of the past 25 years by Wharton business school in '04 and was Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1997.

Anticipating the full impact of deep change is easier said than done, just like progress in technology has resulted in a networked world where geographical distances no longer impede growth of business in a country. "Do you think anybody who was working on the technology or the deployment of fibre optics has configured the world changing consequences of it? I doubt it," he says.

One can, however, recognise the strategic inflection points by listening to the Cbuttandras, people at the frontline of the company who are among the first to encounter signals of change, something Mr Grove says he's attempting himself. "Like Cbuttandras, some of us, like myself, are trying to call the government's attention to this. We all understand it and we all consider it as part of our domestic United States agenda.

Does anybody listen to us? Absolutely not," says Mr Grove, who continues his buttociation with Intel as senior advisor. Don't miss this exclusive interview, his first after vacating the corner room at Intel, in Corporate Dossier on June 3.