Mint: Cognizant CEO Talks About His Work Ethic and Vision for the Future

“Several first-generation entrepreneurs see Francisco D’Souza as an ideal CEO—young and bold enough to take risks,” writes Mint in an exclusive profile of Cognizant's CEO titled, Francisco D’Souza: The Horizon Chaser. “During D’Souza’s tenure as CEO starting in January 2007, Cognizant has expanded revenue from $1.4 billion to $7.35 billion—a compounded annual growth rate of more than 30%,” writes the publication.

J. Bruce Harreld, a lecturer on entrepreneurial management and strategy at Harvard Business School and a former head of strategy at IBM, describes D’Souza as “a very talented, disciplined, charismatic leader with global experience and an inquisitive mind.”

Global Mindset
Talking about his global mindset being a product of his unusually international upbringing— the son of an Indian Foreign Service officer, D’Souza studied in Panama, Zaire, New Delhi, New York, Trinidad, Hong Kong and Pittsburgh—D’Souza says, “We learned to survive and thrive in a ‘flat world’ long before the flat world came in vogue.”

He says, “If there is one thing in my personal life that has made a decisive impact on business in Cognizant, it is the multicultural experience that I have gained and cherished. From the beginning, we have consciously built the organization with this ‘multicultural’ flavor because to serve the global marketplace, you need to be glocal. What I learnt growing up in a microcosm, is very much alive in the DNA at Cognizant.”

Focus on Emerging Businesses
In accelerating emerging businesses at Cognizant by looking into new geographic markets or industries, employing new SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, cloud) technologies, and using new, non-linear delivery models, D’Souza says the idea has been to “use a venture capital paradigm” to grow new business, “with a venture leader running each of them like a CEO”, mixing old talent with new.

He adds, “One of the things we dealt with in 2012 was we had to take our guidance down…that created tremendous focus in the company on making sure that we met our short-term goals. To me, that’s the single testament of how the model worked, because it allowed us to protect our long-term focus even when there was extreme short-term pressure in the business. If we had not had this construct of the Emerging Business Accelerator (EBA), I think it would have been very easy for us to just focus on the short-term goal of meeting revised revenue guidance.”

Nurturing the emerging business sector has been fun, says D’Souza. “It’s something that I have thoroughly enjoyed doing. Every day I wake up thinking about new ideas.”

Uncompromising Work Ethic
The publication notes that D’Souza’s uncompromising work ethic is the driving force behind many of the innovations at Cognizant. D’Souza says: “We have certain growth ambitions at Cognizant; we want to grow faster than the market. In today’s era of volatility, there is no other way but to re-invent. The only sustainable advantage you can have over others is agility, that’s it. Because nothing else is sustainable, everything else you create, somebody else will replicate.”

While Cognizant was born global, D’Souza says, the key to its success was its agility. “Far more than a global mindset, what I learnt was how to change quickly and adapt rapidly. I think this, perhaps more than anything else, is a key to success in the business world today.” He adds, “We have already started seeding for the next five years. This fifth generation of technology is more profound than anything in history.”

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