Mint: Cognizant CEO Discusses Cognizant’s Industry-Leading Growth

“Industry-leading growth is the outcome of two things: reinvesting in the business over a long period of time, and building capabilities relevant to the marketplace,” says Francisco D’Souza. “The market is buying different services and capabilities than a few years ago. We have spent a long time building such capabilities. Clients are looking at us as partners. We’ve never focused solely on scale.”

D’Souza says that clients are facing strong, secular changes in the industry. “They are buying in different ways. They are not saying, “I know what I need to do,” but instead are saying, “Help me figure out what I need to do.” That is where consulting plays a role. So we, as consultants, offer to not just help them understand the problem in detail and find a technology-enabled solution, but also take charge of developing and deploying the technology,” he notes.

In a people business, D’Souza adds, the most critical capability you can have is your ability to develop leaders. “Developing leaders is not just competence, but the responsibility of everyone in the company. We focus on an approach to leadership development that involves movement of people into different roles to have hands-on experience. As Cognizant has scaled, we’ve done so with largely the same management team and that is unique in the industry,” he says.

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