The Economic Times: Cognizant CEO Talks About the Exciting new Frontier of Technology ― the Fourth Industrial Revolution

“Whenever you have a big technology change, there are always voices about the disruption it may cause...forget about technology, innovation in general causes disruption and that is the role of innovation in a sense or a byproduct of innovation, and clearly, there are discussions around disruptions and dislocations at all levels of new technology,” says Francisco D’Souza. “But, in general, the mood that I get is that there is a concern around disruptions but, at the same time, an optimism around what technology is capable of doing.” 

He adds, “It is a fact that we are seeing technology move what the World Economic Forum called the fourth industrial revolution. Technology ten years ago and historically has been a back-office function to help companies be more efficient. Now, it’s moving; technology and data are becoming the lifeblood of companies. That shift from technology being an enabler of a business to technology being the business is an incredible opportunity for us. That shift is being enabled by a whole generation of technologies. It is the capability that we have built in Cognizant to rapidly assess the innovation landscape in the marketplace and then translate that into solutions that we can take to our clients and help them be more competitive that really excites me.”

On Cognizant’s effective response to the floods in Chennai, India, D’Souza says, “Two things contributed to how we managed the situation in Chennai. The first was the robustness of the business continuity plans. The second thing, which is more intangible, is the culture of the company. During the time of the flood, everybody at Cognizant became a leader. We have always had a culture of empowerment. In those moments of the flood, when we would not necessarily be able to actively communicate with everybody, there was no top-down communication going on. People were behaving in the right way. The number one priority for us was to see that our employees were safe; and number two priority was making sure that we continued to provide critical services for clients. I think those things did not have to be communicated, the teams understood those and just executed. I would say culture and planning were the two things that really helped us.”

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