OMShare - Taking Events Global! » PanIIT

Keynote with Glen Tullman (CEO, Allscripts)

Vineet Bansal — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:04:24 +0000

An Oxford Alum and current CEO of Allscripts, Glen Tullman starts with identifying the problems in the current healthcare industry. Technology, he says, is necessary but not the sufficient requirement for having an efficient healthcare system. Technology is needed but there are several other issues which seek solution.

“How to improve quality of care”

“How to lower cost”

“How to improve patient safety” “How to increase patient satisfaction “

To address to these issues he believe right time is NOW. All these concerns are inter-related and if combined they boil down to one common concern- “Lack of information and information distribution”

“Technology is always overestimated in the short run and underestimated in the long term”. By overestimating the importance of technology, other aspects of improving the overall healthcare system are often neglected. Ultimate aim of technology is to provide information.

Primary target of Allscripts is to be “The Bloomberg of Healthcare”. Using technology they want to provide connectivity within the healthcare system. Technology is there and in terms of systems and infrastructure we have what is needed. It’s the information flow which is missing. “The future id here …. It’s just not distributed”. To have an efficient distribution network, leadership is needed.

To be a true global leader having an efficient healthcare system is of utmost importance. To bring about these changes 4 things are necessary: vision, standards, incentives and time limited. The biggest incentive to bring about these changes is $ 38 billion dollars which the government has set aside for improving the healthcare system.

He concludes with an interesting thought “ Many things seem impossible until they are done- Nelson Mandela”. Thinking beyond technology and putting technology in perspective is what he believes is required.

Globalization - Business Leaders Panel

spanjwani — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:52:37 +0000

B. Muthuraman, Managing Director, Tata Steel
Rich Lavin, Group President, Caterpillar
Subodh Bhargava, Chairman, Tata Telecom
Sanjay Khosla, EVP and President, Intl., Kraft Foods
Moderated by Mohanbir Sawhney, Professor, Kellogg School of Business

Mr Khosla emphasizing on innovation in global markets by giving examples of Oreo cookies citing making changes to its product in the Chinese local market to become number one.

Mr Lavin introduces himself and talks about the importance of free trade and globalization. He also emphasizes about selling not only in US but also the outside market and winning the local businesses outside.

He talks about having worked extensively in Asia and seen the dramatic expansion/changes in free trade. He emphasizes the importance of local people, local business in India and China which is critical part in global growth.

Mr. Subodh talks about liberalization in India and believes that it has delivered three things.
-Decision making
-Unleashing of entrepreneurship
-Strategy, first time Indian managers looked at strategy, prior to that all it was about was getting licenses.

The downside to globalization was the disparity but Indian companies moved impressively during this time. Looking for different other geographies, new markets to expand business.

Mr Muthuraman on globalization
-India far more than global than many other countries since ancient times.
-Indians can adjust to different cultural diversities by nature which leads to taking on globalization coming naturally
-Due to long colonial rules/socialistic patterns innovation was not there but Tata Steel after liberalization became competitive and stood the ground.
-One of the challenges with Tata Steel was to change the mindset of its people, of thinking big and turn to globalization. It took time but they have managed to bring about radical changes on this front.

Panelist talks about passion and processes to bring about efficiencies in the businesses. They talk about the passion in emerging markets (India/China) to bring about the best products to the world.

On creating & protecting intellectual property in India:
They feel that until liberalization no one cared about it and to create it. Now there is a change in mindset, be it bio tech or other fields, and today India can be relied upon to be trust for protecting intellectual property.

On the approach to acquire outside India, Is this the best way to buy scale? Although entire direction is not on going all the way to acquisition but in markets where it is difficult to build business organically, an acquisition can help.
This has to be looked upon on a case to case basis.

Keynote by US President Bill Clinton at PanIIT 2009

Pradeep Chopra — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:36:01 +0000

Today is the BIG day for PanIIT 2009. Everyone is anxiously waiting for the Keynote by 42nd President of USA, Mr. Bill Clinton.

Although Mr Clinton needs NO introduction, it is everyone’s pleasure at PanIIT 2009 to hear about Mr Clinton’s Contribution. Elected President of the United States in 1992, and again in 1996, President Clinton was the first Democratic president to be awarded a second term in six decades. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. President Clinton’s core values of building community, creating opportunity, and demanding responsibility resulted in unprecedented progress for America, including moving the nation from record deficits to record surpluses; the creation of over 22 million jobs—more than any other administration; low levels of unemployment, poverty and crime; and the highest homeownership and college enrollment rates in history. To summarize his contribution, Mr Gupta mentioned that Mr Clinton deserves 2 awards – Nobel Prize for Peace and Economy.

Mr Clinton started his talk by recognizing the contribution of IITs and IITians in advancing US Economy. He shared the contribution of American Indian Foundation (http://www.aif.org), a non-profit American development organization that is devoted to accelerating social and economic change in India. Talking on recent financial crisis, he emphasised on the importance of Technology, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which are key to forward World Economy and thus creating Peace and Prosperity. He mentioned about various projects he is currently involved in - especially about solving AIDS and other Healthcare challenges.

According to him, Indian organizations are key to solving such global problems and he recognized their contribution by mentioning the role Indian pharmaceutical companies played in helping bring the prices down of various essential drugs - in some cases from as high as 600$ to 60$.

He then talked about the problem of deforestation, which is another major problem faced by every country. Deforestation plays a major role in Global Warming and thus it’s critical to curb deforestation. He shared about the ideas his organization is working on to reduce deforestation by finding alternative ways to fulfil the needs (e.g. the biggest reason for which trees are cut today is to produce charcoal), which are otherwise being served by cutting trees.

He then spoke about Microcredit and the role it is playing in creating opportunities, which otherwise were unimaginable for people around the globe. He then gave another example by displaying a torch, which will make available electricity for millions of people. And, there are many other such opportunities which according to him “can’t just solve key global problems (related to healthcare, education etc) but also can create hugely profitable business opportunities for entrepreneurs. “

You can’t be a good citizen in 21st century by just going to school, pay taxes, obey laws etc. Today, the definition of good citizen includes “social contribution”. Finally, he urged the PanIIT 2009 audience, which comprises of over 2500 IITians (as well few non-IITians) to take responsibility and contribute to society in any way possible-– technology is a great lever to solve global challenges.

It was true privilege to hear to this man who has made (and will continued to do so) extraordinary contribution to humanity.

It’s time now to dance to the tunes of Kailash Kher and his troupe here at Chicago.

Innovation at America - Keynote a PanIIT 2009 by Aneesh Chopra (CTO of US Govt)

Vineet Bansal — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:47:00 +0000

An eventful first day is followed by better weather and even bigger audience. The day kicks off with Mr. Sudhakar Shenoy introducing our keynote speaker Mr. Aneesh Chopra, CTO, US government. He is the first person to hold any such position and has been doing a commendable job since inception of his task.

He starts with an overview of the Obama administration and establishes the fact that the main motive of Obama administration is “Excellence” in every field. Emphasizing the importance of Technology in innovations, Mr. Aneesh quotes that $100 Billion out of $800 Billion economic stimulus was dedicated to infrastructure for technology.

United States has been lagging behind other nations in terms of benchmark indicators such as development in E-government, Higher Education and other metrics calculated to compare global competitiveness. US is growing but a far lesser rate than other countries. What is the response of United States to these benchmark indicators?

Three policies have been identified as of utmost priority:
a) Invest in the building blocks of innovation- building smarter infrastructure
b) Promote innovation for national priorities – Promote R&D collaboration
c) Instill an open government structure – Prepare 21st Century Workforce and providing access to government data to all to utilize that data and build more monitoring applications which will make the quality of life better. By opening up key areas of government to public will catalyze the entrepreneurs and help them to make the administration hear their voice.

Talking about policy making is easy but implementing it is the key. Citing an example of the USCIS website, Mr. Aneesh says that this government is capable and wiling to fulfill their promises. After promising improvement in the customer services department of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services website, within 90 days the government achieved what they had promised.

With a more fulfilling government, he calls to all the people in the hall to identify the hidden opportunities and talent in various pockets of the society and introduce them to the platform instilled by the government to nurture such aspirations.

Entrepreneurship is the Key to World’s Economy - Carl J. Schramm (Kaufmann Foundation)

Vineet Bansal — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:36:12 +0000

An eventful first day of the three day PAN IIT 2009 conference enters into the evening session. Large audience seated in a huge ballroom is enlightened by Dr. Carl Schramm. Founder of the Kauffman foundation, Dr. Schramm is a highly respected personality in the entrepreneur community. Entrepreneurial capital he says is the biggest contributor in shaping the present economy as it is.

There has been a sudden surge in the Entrepreneurial activity in India and China in the past few years is one of the prime reasons for these countries to pop up on the world map. Entrepreneurial activity is what drives the economy and it’s not the economy which shrinks or expand in bad and good times, it is the firms that shrink or grow. It’s the high growth firms which contribute to the prosperity of the economy. He disagrees with the notion of starting early to be an Entrepreneur and quotes that the average age of top 500 Entrepreneurs is 39 years.

America’s success story is dedicated to the fact of understanding the transformation of a start up to a high growth firm. With this understanding, Kauffman foundation has started a new program of nurturing Entrepreneurs in their laboratories. Comparing this to IIT’s, Dr. Schramm says that every IIT graduate is a potential Entrepreneur who has the potential to contribute in the growth of the economy.

Dr. Schramm concludes by urging everybody present in the hall to think big and think for the economy as a whole.

Innovation & Entrepreneurship - Identifying New Business Opportunities (Panel Discussion at PanIIT 2009)

Vineet Bansal — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:28:13 +0000

Moderator: Desh Deshpande Chairman of Sycamore Networks, Tejas Networks, A123 Systems, Sandstone Capital and HiveFire

Panelists: Prof. Scott Meadow Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth School of Business Ali Shadman Partner, JK&B Capital PM Pai Venture Partner, NEA Prabha Sinha Founder & Co-Chairman, ZS Associates

One of the many panel discussions running parallely, this one focuses on “Identifying new business opportunities”. This discussion gels with the conference theme “Innovation:. Mr. Desh, moderator, welcomes the panel. A very diverse panel with focus on opportunities in any sector establish that an opportunity in any particular field is a source of potential opportunities in many other fields.

A brief round of introduction is followed by Q&A where one of the interesting question comes on “When to pursue the ideas one has ?”. Common consensus of the panel being ASAP!! The idea needs a right platform and that’s where innovation plays its role.

Passion is what drives an entrepreneur and it’s the right people and resources which help grow it. It’s never too late to pursue what one feel is right. The panels concluded with the message to everybody that an idea needs to be presented so just don’t sit on it and bring it right people to turn it into a successful venture.

Social Networking for Success at PanIIT 2009

Pradeep Chopra — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:30:38 +0000

Christopher S. Rollyson (Consultant and Marketing Executive), the moderator of this very interesting and relevant session welcomed the audience. He started his talk by saying that Social Networks are causing disruption in the way the business is done today. The key reason behind this disruption is the fundamental nature of Social Networks - “relationship” is critical to any decision making. Today, customers expect companies to start communicating through Social Networks. And, “Word of Mouth” is highly pervasive and digital today.

Social Networking not just offers an opportunity for Sales & Marketing but also for various other business functions such as Recruitment, Customer Feedback etc.

We now have Clara Shih, the author of The Facebook Era. She led the Salesforce.com’s formal partnership with Facebook. The title of Clara’s presentation is “Networking in the Facebook Era”. The importance of Facebook can be estimated by the no of active users on Facebook today – over 300 million users spending more than 6 billion minutes every day. Today, Facebook has really gone mainstream – the greatest growth on Facebook is among the people in the age of 35 – 49 and more than Women than Men.

Mark O Goodman, director of Social Networking and Augmented Reality at Alcatel –Lucent is our next speaker. He highlighted some of the projects his company is doing:

1. Video Mobile Social Networking Tool (with Penn State University)

2. Augmented Reality (with Georgia Tech) - take graphics and overlay them on real world

He also shared how actively Social Networking is being used internally at Alcatel-Lucent for day to day activities.

Kevin P. Rice (Director, Social Networking Solutions at Allstate) is our network. He talked about “Good Hands Community” [http://www.goodhandscommunity.org/aghhome], which offers “together you can share ideas about keeping families safe, saving money and preparing for what’s next”. He also shared how Allstate is actively engaged on Social Networks

The final message he said was “don’t just depend upon online world”; “P” of People is still very important and can’t be substituted by any other medium.

Joseph Paulsen, SVP Marketing Analytics at Experian Marketing Services is our next and the last speaker. He shared how his company helps clients understand their customers from sales data and sophisticated analytics (including social media data). He emphasised on the importance of the “online reputation” for any business, which is serious about leveraging Social Media for its growth.

The session was concluded by a highly interactive Q & A session. Interestingly, this (and other panel discussions) was the first sessions which could accommodate Q & A.

Invention is the key to Jump the Queue in a Competitive World - Keynote by Nathan Myhrvold (CEO, Intellectual Ventures & Founder of Microsoft Research)

Vineet Bansal — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:28:22 +0000

The opening of PAN IIT 2009 had set the theme up for coming three days and clearly the focus is on Education, Invention and Innovation. Following the opening ceremony, the conference moves on to the second keynote speaker Dr. Nathan Myhrvold, introduced by Mr. Umang Gupta, a leading entrepreneur.

“Invention-road to prosperity” is what Dr. Nathan starts with and emphasizes that invention is the quickest and most efficient path to economic development and especially for a developing country like India who has the required skill set. Economic development can be achieved by following the traditional path and he cites examples of countries like Japan, Korea and Israel. However, following what is set upon you by somebody else will always result in a generation gap and hence the emphasis on the technological shortcut –“Invention”.

Crisp power point slides and very apt citations has kept the delegates completely engaged and have left them thinking. Focusing on the potential of Indian Intellectuals, he re-iterates the fact that IIT’s have played an important role in the development of Silicon Valley. The need is to harness this potential and put into invention. India’s current licensing revenue is a meager fraction of their annual GDP and if it reaches to a proportion of what the ratio is for United States then there is potential $300 MM increase in annual GDP.

Very inspiring and interesting talk is concluded with the fact that good ideas can come from anywhere and it is the intellectual capital which needs to be optimally invested.

PanIIT 2009 is Open - Over 2500 IITians from across the World!

Pradeep Chopra — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:20:40 +0000

The weather might not be warm in Chicago but the PanIIT 2009 conference opened with a warm welcome by none other than the conference chair Ray Mehra. On behalf of over 175,000 IIT Alumni worldwide, Ray welcomed more than 2500 delegates comprising of industry thought leaders, academicians, entrepreneurs and students. Ray welcomed distinguished guests including Sam Pitroda, Rajat Gupta, Umang Gupta, Arjun Malhotra, Smt Purandeswari. The conference got opened by Lamp Lightning ceremony by Smt. Purandeswari and then followed by introductory remarks by guest of honors. Sam Pitroda shared some of the fundamental strategies put in place by UPA Government meant for the next decade. The economic growth achieved by Indian economy according to him is fuelled by Technology, Innovation, FDI and Entrepreneurship. The focus according to the new mandate by the UPA Government is “inclusion” - Education & Knowledge are recognized as the key elements for future growth. The new government is majorly focusing on imparting education and creating employment for masses. The programs including “female literacy” are going to significantly contribute to the future growth. He shared his enthusiasm and excitement on UPA Government’s plans to transform India. The theme for the PanIIT 2009 conference “Entrepreneurship and Innovation in a Global Economy” can’t be more apt in the current turbulent economic environment.

FORMER PRESIDENT CLINTON TO SPEAK AT PANIIT 2009 GLOBAL CONFERENCE

Kapil Nakra — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 03:44:03 +0000

CHICAGO - August 2, 2009

Former President Bill Clinton, founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation and 42nd President of the United States, will speak at the Seventh Annual PanIIT Global Conference 2009 to be held in Chicago from October 9-11, 2009 on the theme of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in a Global Economy. He will speak to attendees about innovative ways to address challenges and opportunities in the critical areas of education, energy & climate change, and public health, with a focus on transforming ideas into action. The conference theme is aligned with the goals of the William J. Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative in bringing together a community of global leaders and private citizens in identifying and implementing innovative solutions for the world’s most pressing challenges. The high profile attendees at the conference, including academics, executives and professionals from leading institutions and corporations, are in a position to have a real impact in these critical areas. The conference welcomes all participants regardless of their affiliation with the IITs.

The presence of speakers and panelists such as Mr. Aneesh Chopra, CTO of the US and Indian Ambassador Ms. Meera Shankar will ensure that projects and ideas initiated at the conference will get support and sponsorship at the senior-most levels in government and industry.

Entrepreneurs and innovators are invited to participate in the Business Plan Competition (BPC) by visiting the event website to register before the deadline. The BPC will provide a platform for enabling mentoring and funding of new ideas - contact bpc@paniit2009.org for more.

The luminaries at the event include James W. Owens, Chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc.; Sharon M. Oster, Dean of the Yale School of Management; Sam Pitroda, Chairman of India’s National Knowledge Commission; Tulsi Tanti, Chairman of Suzlon Energy; Carl Shramm, President and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship; and Prof. Raghuram G. Rajan, of the University of Chicago and Former Chief Economist of the IMF.

Registration information and agenda are available at http://www.paniit2009.org. All sessions are open to the media and coverage is encouraged - contact media@paniit2009.org.

About IIT Alumni: PanIIT (http://www.iit.org) is an umbrella alumni organization for all the campuses of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) which was described on CBS 60 Minutes as the Harvard, MIT and Princeton of India.

PanIIT 2009 Global Conference
Entrepreneurship and Innovation in a Global Economy
October 9-11, 2009 - Chicago, IL
http://www.paniit2009.org

The PanIIT 2009 Global Conference will bring together a diverse group of thought leaders from industry, academia and government, including alumni of the prestigious IITs. President Bill Clinton is one of the many eminent speakers and panelists at the conference who will be speaking about challenges and opportunities in the critical areas of education, energy & climate change, public health and digital infrastructure. The agenda includes numerous informative workshops and panel discussions on current topics, and extensive networking opportunities to meet with technologists, investors, academics and entrepreneurs. The conference welcomes all participants regardless of their affiliation with the IITs.