What CIOs can Learn from Serial Entrepreneurs: K. Ganesh

10.02.2015
CIO: What is the biggest take-away for tech leaders from serial entrepreneurs

K. Ganesh:

There are many interesting things about entrepreneurship. But I would say that the most interesting aspect of entrepreneurship is the ability to change. Whether it is the language, the architecture methods or the technology, everything is changing by the day. That's true for both entrepreneurship as well as tech leaders. The ability to adapt to changes and quickly learn new things on the fly are something that the CIOs and entrepreneurs have in common. It is like repairing the car when the engine is on.

CIO: You have run multiple successful ventures in the past. At the same time, you have ensured that you make very timely exits from these ventures. This ability to 'let go' is something very hard to come by. Do you think it is a quality that will help today's CIOs

K. Ganesh:

I think it takes us back to the aspect of constant change. The point is a CIO's job is tough and at the same time quite different. Imagine being an engineering manager in an automobile company. There is hardly any technological shift or any major change that happens to that role. Even the organizational structure does not change for him. But if you take information technology as a department and look closely at the CIOs or CTOs job, you realize that it is a highly dynamic role. For example, today the decision making power in an IT department is getting decentralized. The rise of social and crowd-sourced technologies has changed everything. Automatically, the hierarchical structure of an IT organization becomes quite different as compared to an engineering or manufacturing department for instance. So the ability to let go is certainly a big advantage for a CIO, because that helps him to get adapted to such quick changes.

CIO: Entrepreneurs are usually calculated risk-takers, so are the CIOs, on many occasions. Do you think the ability to take risk has got something to do with age

K. Ganesh:

I don't think so. My wife Meena and I were past 50 when we started Portea, the home medical company. You might face some issues when you're starting for the first time. But the older you get, the freer you are. That said, what you may not able to do is come up with some 'cool' apps like a Snapchat or Whatsapp and make billions of dollars in two or three years.

CIO: Meena and you are one of the most storied entrepreneur duo today. Having the right partner seems to be the key ingredient of success for start-ups.

K. Ganesh:

In fact, all my ventures have had co-founders. In two of my ventures, my wife was the co-founder. I think it is extremely important for a start-up or rather any company to have multiple skill-sets and points of view. Building a start-up is extremely hard. The chances of success are less than 5 percent. When you are fighting these kind of odds, you would want to have all the aces in your hand. One way to ensure that is by having a bunch co-founders or partners to share the responsibilities as well as frustrations. It is extremely lonely to be an entrepreneur. Having partners, especially if they have different but complementing skills, helps a lot in completing the team. It is very important if you are planning to raise venture capital fund. VCs almost always insist on funding 'teams' rather than funding one individual.

CIO: You might have already observed that a large number of CIOs are reluctant to work with start-ups. Is that one of the biggest bottle necks that today's start-ups face in India

K. Ganesh:

Yes, especially the B2B start-ups face this problem. And I do not blame the CIO or the organization alone for that. As the saying goes, 'nobody got fired for buying IBM'. If a CIO buys from a start-up and tomorrow it shuts shop, he or she will be questioned as to why he put the organization at risk. In fact, many ERP companies have actually sold that fear very well to succeed in the market. They have been constantly pushing the message that if an ERP implementation fails, the CIO will be the first person to get fired as the whole organization will come to a stall. But at the same time, if you look at cloud-based products and SaaS offerings, start-ups are able to offer the same advantages as a traditional software vendor did, at a fraction of the cost with more features. So there is a fine balancing act the CIO has to do and I can perfectly understand why they have to do it.

(www.cio.in)

Radhika Nallayam

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