Monday, October 13, 2003
The Agenda Setters
I dont know how recent this list is, but Silicon.com has put together a list of the top agenda setters in 2003 for the technology industry. All the usual suspects are in there -- Steve Jobs and Bill Gates top the list. The rest of the group includes everyone from Linus Torvalds to Carly Fiorina to Time Berners-Lee to Sir John Sulston. The interesting part is that the top-10 includes two names that I would not have expected in this group -- at no:4, Hu Jintao and at no:8 Atal Behari Vajpayee -- and yes, they place above names like Rupert Murdoch, Arun Sarin, Jeff Bezos etc. This is clearly indicative of the importance the tech industry places on India and China.
With China, size is everything and a population of some 1.3 billion people means the modernisation of Chinese society will turn the country into the most lucrative technology market in the world. The country already has 300 million mobile phone users - twice that of the US.
The profile of Vajpayee includes the following lines -- India's boom - largely engineered by Vajpayee - means some analysts are predicting the country could face its own IT skills crisis over the next five years. Initiatives introduced by Vajpayee include generous tax incentives for outsourcers investing in call centres and computer technology, technology parks and plans for a national fibre optics telephony infrastructure.
The Indian boom engineered by Vajpayee??? I am not sure I would too many Indian techies who would buy that one. A large part of the Indian IT industry's success has been precisely because the government stayed out of it. Of course, the govt has provided tax sops and so on, but does that have anything to do with Vajpayee? I am not really sure he understands technology the way a Chandrababu Naidu does (and I am surprised Naidu did not make the cut here). I believe the best thing Vajpayee has done is to stay out of the way and let his far more competent underlings handle things.
The other politicians on the list include Mario Monti, Christian Ude (the mayor of Munich) and David Blunkett (for some of his Orwellian ideas).
With China, size is everything and a population of some 1.3 billion people means the modernisation of Chinese society will turn the country into the most lucrative technology market in the world. The country already has 300 million mobile phone users - twice that of the US.
The profile of Vajpayee includes the following lines -- India's boom - largely engineered by Vajpayee - means some analysts are predicting the country could face its own IT skills crisis over the next five years. Initiatives introduced by Vajpayee include generous tax incentives for outsourcers investing in call centres and computer technology, technology parks and plans for a national fibre optics telephony infrastructure.
The Indian boom engineered by Vajpayee??? I am not sure I would too many Indian techies who would buy that one. A large part of the Indian IT industry's success has been precisely because the government stayed out of it. Of course, the govt has provided tax sops and so on, but does that have anything to do with Vajpayee? I am not really sure he understands technology the way a Chandrababu Naidu does (and I am surprised Naidu did not make the cut here). I believe the best thing Vajpayee has done is to stay out of the way and let his far more competent underlings handle things.
The other politicians on the list include Mario Monti, Christian Ude (the mayor of Munich) and David Blunkett (for some of his Orwellian ideas).
