Transforming People, Process and Technology… a long-term marathon, not a sprint!

Surena Gupta spoke to Bill Gates and Rakesh Rathi on their vision for the Next Wave of Innovation under Fortune India Exchange.

Technology, Digitalization and Automation

Bill Gates: We are changing the world with technology, signalling the digital transformation that human society, economic relations and lifestyle are currently undergoing. The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.

Rakesh Rathi: Technology has become ubiquitous in the workplace. Every vertical and industry is now disrupted by technology and this then results in improved Customer Experience (CX) impacting everyone B2B or B2C. Customer-centric automation is the centre-stage of the exponential digital revolution where innovation is the game-changer. Cloud, 5G, AI/ML, Collaboration Tools, Cyber Security, Robotics and Quantum Computing would define the next-gen tech. Look, the WFH (Work from Home) business continuity due to the current pandemic has primarily been possible due to technology. We are just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to disruption and digitalization.

Trust in Transformation & Science

Bill Gates: The issue is just basic trust—for ex: how do people think about vaccines? And so, the vaccines that really count are the ones that have gone through the gold standard regulators, because people do worry about safety and effectiveness and that they can be made at low cost and very high volume. Leaders need to provide strategy and direction and to give employees tools that enable them to gather information and insight from around the world. Leaders shouldn’t try to make every decision and it imperative they are fair to the employees.

Rakesh Rathi: Transformation is a collective alignment of People, Process and Technology. Strategic maturity of business KPIs with tech is extremely important. In parallel, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is also an absolute reality and hence any initiative to transform has to be driven top-down by CxO and listening to your customers for a successful result. Transformation is a long-term marathon, not a sprint!

Innovation in Drug Development

Bill Gates: We actually have a concrete project with Moderna to do a malaria vaccine construct using the messenger RNA platform [a method also being used for some COVID vaccine candidates]. We started backing these mRNA vaccines almost a decade ago. They are very promising and could be used potentially for HIV and tuberculosis as well.

Rakesh Rathi: Collectively, the top 20 pharmaceutical companies spend approximately $60billion on drug development each year. Gene therapy, mRNA, Biotechnology have had a huge success in the past and this was reflected during the recent vaccine development for Covid-19; this validates continuous investments for innovation in pharma. A hybrid mix of Reimagining R&D, Patient-and Healthcare-professional-centric Design Thinking (DT), Agile development, Process re-engineering using predictive modelling, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Language (ML) coupled with Digital and Tech enablement will accelerate new drugs development which currently takes years and billions of dollars and also a faster GTM (Go-To-Market). Health is now a top priority globally!

Collaboration among companies and PPP (Public-Private Partnership) — a vision for optimism

Bill Gates: A company that excels at production agrees to manufacture products designed by another company with a viable vaccine candidate. The pharma industry is certainly stepping up to play their role. A lot of the big companies are agreeing to put their best people on both therapeutics and vaccines, and to do so on a non-profit basis, is pretty spectacular. And that’s why we have six vaccine constructs [methods of building vaccine], each of which could possibly be through an FDA Phase III clinical trial and receive an emergency-use license by early next year.

Rakesh Rathi: For a P3 (PPP) engagement to be successful, the word “partner” truly must connote that “we’re in this together”. The current pandemic and vaccine development has accelerated this P3 model and has produced impressive results in saving valuable human lives.

Industry Disruption and Accelerated Scaling

Bill Gates: We’ll be faced with the challenge of scaling up manufacturing to a completely unheard-of level. The form of cooperation that’s never been done before is having a company that did not invent the vaccine provide its factories so that they can scale up that manufacture. Serum Institute of India, for example, has deals with AstraZeneca and [Maryland-based vaccine maker] Novavax. So we’re facilitating those pairings because the Indian manufacturers are much higher volume. They’ve got 5,000-liter tanks and huge built-in extra capacity. Another example of a recent disruption is more than 50% of business travel will disappear in the post-coronavirus world due to work from home.

Rakesh Rathi: Scaling solutions differ from industry to industry. IT (Information Technology) scaling has been a hot topic and a hybrid model of Onsite-Offshore-Nearshore has produced impressive results. Manufacturing companies have benefited from investments in high-quality equipment such as robots. machinery and automation. E-commerce and E-banking has been a major disruption for the Retail/FMCG and Banking verticals respectively. From a Pharma perspective, transformation of the supply chain model has generated interest during the recent distribution and manufacturing of vaccines.

Global drug development in Asia and India

Bill Gates: The biggest vaccine manufacturer in the world, Serum Institute of India, is producing doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine; hence Serum will receive $150 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Our foundation took on some of the financial risk, so if it doesn't get approved, Serum won't have to take a full loss. It's great to see India’s leadership in scientific innovation and vaccine manufacturing capability as the world works to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rakesh Rathi: APAC drug development market size is estimated at USD 58 billion in 2021, so there is huge potential primarily due to the demographics. Global pharma firms such as Novartis, Roche, Pfizer, AstraZeneca et al have a sizeable presence in India to drive their Drug Development, Service Centre and Operations strategy in every sector (Diagnostics, Pharma, BioTech).

Next phase of India’s growth

Bill Gates: In India, there’s so much potential, you see streets teeming with people. You meet really bright people who got through the education system. The mix of humanity is just mind-blowing and you think okay if we could educate and unleash all this human potential. It’s incredible. And then, you know, if you go to the foundation office or Microsoft Office you see people who have had the best Indian education and you see how smart they are and what they’re contributing.

Rakesh Rathi: I would agree with Bill’s view on this. Look, over 60% of India’s 1.3 billion people are under the age of 35 and we have over 500+ million internet connected and Smartphone users, so clearly this young demography will contribute to the global digital revolution. Also, IT and ITeS sectors in India grew to USD 210 billion in 2020. Manufacturing and start-ups are promising but dependant on government initiatives. Multiple large global clients which I have engaged with across verticals in my experience of 28 years for ex: Novartis, UBS, Nestle, ABB, Credit-Suisse, Roche, Swiss-Re et al have a sizeable presence in India as a CoE (Centre of Excellence) and/or Shared Service….so clearly this is a proven successful model.

Advice today to the young entrepreneur, who says I want to be like Bill Gates.

Bill Gates: Starting out, with that in mind, the chance of success isn’t, you know, super high. It’s great to be ambitious but it’s probably best to pick the area you want to contribute. You know there are frontiers in software. There are frontiers in medicine, there are frontiers in climate change. And so if you define yourself in terms of really caring about one of those things and getting deeply educated, whether or not you get a big company and, you know, lots of money, you’re guaranteed to have fulfilment if you tackle the biggest problems of humanity.

Rakesh Rathi: Follow your heart, think BIG, challenge and believe-in yourself, stay focussed, take calculated risks, always be CUSTOMER-CENTRIC (look, listen, lead) and have a work-life balance.A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step! I enjoy playing Chess and believe one can apply learnings from Chess to business and entrepreneurship. Steve Jobs, Dhirubhai Ambani, Bill Gates, Narayana Murthy, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk et al had humble beginnings yet had a vision which made them successful entrepreneurs and they have disrupted markets and even entire industries. Watch the quote in the movie -- The Pursuit of Happyness “Don’t ever let somebody tell you….you can’t do something. You got a dream…you gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you that you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period”.

Destiny or free will?

Bill Gates: I’ll say free will

Rakesh Rathi: Yes, free will is pre-requisite to shape destiny. Your actions can write (or re-write) your own destiny.

Education and/or experience?

Bill Gates: Well, I’m pretty big on education, but you know I admit you need both.

Rakesh Rathi: I agree, we need both. Education should be relevant to build your Experience (multi-skills). STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) at K-12 is a progressive way forward. Have a mindset of lifelong learning.

Philanthropy and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)

Bill Gates: Since 1994, the Bill & Melinda Gates-Foundation has awarded $54.8 billion in grants. The only difference is that if you’re a billionaire in a rich country, you should consider sending some of your money outside of your country. If you’re a billionaire in, say, India, or in Africa, you will probably give most of your money in your own country. And I’m always trying to get Indian billionaires interested in these causes such as health and education.

Rakesh Rathi: Philanthropy can be personal and/or corporate level. Few role models for philanthropy in India are Ratan Tata, Nita Ambani, Sudha Murthy and of-course Gates Foundation. One of my finest learnings on philanthropy was during a 3-hour drive from Zurich to Geneva with Mr Azim Premji where-in Mr Premji spoke passionately about giving back to society. Mr Premji has donated $21billion in to charity for education, nutrition and healthcare and is among the world’s top philanthropists. It is a delight listening to their initiatives, they all are so modest!

Diversity and Inclusion (D&I)

Bill Gates: When you have a huge setback like this (pandemic), we need to remind ourselves that this is tougher on the woman. Even in rich countries…women often do more of the housework, and helping the kids with their online education, often falls to the Mom…Melinda’s very articulate there are gender-focused policies that can reduce some of the increased burden on women. So, economic development, fortunately, starts to change that… the more urban areas start to change that.

Rakesh Rathi: D&I plays a very important role for Customer Experience (CX) since clients nowadays prefer to have a diverse ethnic team engaging with them since they bring in different perspective due to their diverse background. The most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to perform better than less diverse peers on profitability and this reaffirms the strong business case for ethnic, gender and cultural diversity in corporates. Just look around your own teams….wouldn’t it be more interesting with knowledge-share if you have colleagues who have diverse ethnic and cultural background? Leaders have a responsibility to diffuse and course-correct any division/teams which enforces a non-diverse workplace since it can be negative to team morale. While most corporates have D&I in their overall company vision and policies, many have not really been able to send a strong message further down the hierarchies to ACTUALLY implement this…..Actions speak louder than Words!

Your passion for books

Bill Gates: Adult life is so easy to fill up with activities. The ability to step back and read deeply or think deeply or write up thoughts is largely missing. I think of myself as a student where I need almost like a reading period to consolidate my knowledge. Since I retired from Microsoft in 2008, I don’t have to do it necessarily as one block, a week at a time, but I do set aside lots of days, and then I say, “Did I write the memo that I intended to write?” The act of writing—when you try to explain it to someone else—is where you really are forced to think things through and not be sloppy in your thinking.

Rakesh Rathi: My fascination with books started off quite early during school days due to my then favourite authors P.G.Wodehouse and Charles Dickens. It has now developed into a passion that I can never give up. There’s nothing better than reading an interesting book while drinking a steaming cup of coffee with music in the background amidst falling snow and a blazing fireplace in my humble (rather small) library at home. Collectively, they all pair perfectly well together. Of-course, I balance this by also spending time with family, friends and sports.