How will you define the emerging business landscape?
The business landscape will be defined by the major challenges that the world faces today and what we call the ‘megatrends’. Most of these challenges will be triggered by the population growth. We are going to be 7 billion people in the coming year and 9 billion in the next couple of decades. This is going to mean a huge challenge for the world economy in aspects such as how to feed this growing population, how to reduce dependency to fossil fuels, how to take care of people security and safety, et al. All this growth will happen mainly in the emerging countries. So the focus will be on how we increase food production from the same number of acres of agricultural land, how we introduce renewable sources of energy and how we provide better safety for people and the environment. Those are the mega challenges we are looking at. Tremendous innovation will have to be brought in to address these challenges and this will have to happen in this part of the world – innovation that looks at solving the challenges that are unique to this part of the world. The emerging markets are going to need a very different set of products, at different price points and this innovation will need to happen in this part of the world and that is what I will call the “next orbit” of business.

In this new business scenario, what is the role of a leader?
The challenges ahead of us are so huge that nobody is going to be able to solve them alone, no company or government will be able to tackle them alone. The name of the game in business is going to be more on collaboration, engagement, and networking. The role of the leaders is going to be measured on how do they engage their people, how do they collaborate with other companies and governments. The need for focus in these areas will escalate.

How do you think the framework of governance, risk management and compliance will shape in future?
As we walk along, all these areas will become fundamentally strong. The expectations from the regulatory authorities of larger corporations are going to be more and this is going to be driven by two aspects: one, the core value systems which are fundamentally regardless of the business, and second, the approach to corporate governance and compliance beyond the legislation requirement by looking at what is right and earning your right to operate. These two elements will be imperative for companies to see longer term sustained growth.