Business Innovation and Ict Strategies

This book investigates the real process of unleashing the power of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) through Open Innovation and strategic choices.

 It covers the most important aspects of ICT in a nutshell and details the road to the future through business innovation. ICT, of which telecom and IT constitute the core, is currently permeating and transforming every sphere of life, ranging from commerce, manufacturing, education and healthcare, to agriculture, banking, governance, media and entertainment. Today, telecommunication and ICT, in general, are essential to a country’s economic development and competitiveness as recognized both by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Due to the powerful, disruptive and rapid forces unleashed by ICT tsunami, organisations not only struggle to harness the potential of ICT but can also be overwhelmed by the changes, complexity, competition and regulatory environment it brings up.

This book provides a clue to organisations on how to sustain and succeed by leveraging ICT in absence of extensive in-house expertise across the breadth and depth of these areas. The driving theme of the book is about opening up organizational and business models, by presenting an integrated roadmap to a future with ICT, by co-opting, cooperating and competing with other organisations.

Sriram Birudavolu is Senior Vice President and Head of Information Sciences at the T-Hub Foundation, where he also runs a Market Research Program. With over 24 years of experience in the ICT/Telecom industry, he is a C-Level advisor and has worked in over a dozen countries on 4 continents, with reputed organizations, such as Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, VeriSign and Siemens. His areas of interest are: business and technology innovation, ICT, IT and telecom, and enterprise architectures. He holds a PhD in International Business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (specializing in Open Innovation in ICT), a Master’s in Computer Science and a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering. He is a TOGAF certified Enterprise Architect, and a Certified PMP (Project Management Professional). He has also published and presented papers in international journals and conferences and has delivered guest lectures at academic institutes and companies alike. Currently, he is an academic advisor to Mahindra Ecole Centrale.

Biswajit Nag is a Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi. Involved in empirical economic research for nearly two decades, he also has extensive teaching experience in India and abroad. Earlier, he served the Poverty and Development Division of UN-ESCAP, Bangkok. Dr Nag has completed a number of projects for the Government of India and international agencies such as the UN, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, WTO, DFID, and the EU. His current research interests are trade and technology, international production networks, global value chains, trade in services (including IT enabled services), etc. Dr. Nag is one of the advisors on global value chains at the Asia Pacific Research and Training Network (ARTNet), UNESCAP. He is an active member of GERPISA, a Europe-based international automobile research network. Dr. Nag teaches courses on international economics, the global business environment and econometrics at the IIFT, and advises firms and government agencies on international market access and strategic issues.