Being David - A Spirit Rarer than Tanzanite

It's a special day and a sad one...As I write this post, there are packers all around me, wrapping the last remains of a small agency called David.

It's funny how much I have got attached to this agency in just over 12 months!

Are we the creative hot-shop that the world(well, part of it at least) calls us?
Maybe we are not.
Are we radical in the way the edgier agencies in the western hemisphere have adopted new media?
No again...

But, I can say with certainty that Brand David as it stood and shone is/ was culturally the richest agency brand in India!

Before it was decided to merge it with Bates Asia. Because it makes sense to have a stronger mid-sized network in the region...

But in life and in business what makes sense may not always be right!
Cultures are about shared dreams. They need more nurture and less merger!

After my initial anger and resilienece, the planner in me has bought into the merger.
David hasn't.

You may ask, if we aren't edge-ily creative or new media mavericks...what makes us so special...

My list wud include the following.

1. Josy Paul - the maverick guy who along with Madhukar Sabnavis and now Kumar started it all.

2. I don't know about the other 5 years but in the last one year while I have been a David, Josy has helped create a culture of creative strategists...

Creative in the new millennium is not about 'silo thinking'! The best work comes from a seamless integration of creativity and thinking! And we have here in our play-rooms and on the WallOfDavid.

We have done brave thinking...The results may not match to our efforts...But in our thinking and culture, we may be as edgy as W+K, Mother, Naked, et al...

3. David's model of senior guys hands-on everything and lots of energetic young Davids worked for us!

4. We have possibly the best training program in the country...It was called endless converstaions between youthful energy and passionate experience...
No closed doors, just windows of opportunity for everyone...

And our open-source training programme 'SchoolOfDavid' was amongst the most 'fun-and-play' modules possible in our industry.

5. A while ago I read in BusinessWeek that the metal Tanzanite is rarer than even diamond. As it is mined in just one small dusty town of Tanzania...I may sound utterly soppy and nostalgic, but the spirit of David is a rarer metal than even Tanzanite...

I think I was a David before joining David and believe that all of us(Davids) will retain a part of it where we go next...

It's very easy in today's world to buy technology, sometimes even market shares but it's next to impossible to buy or create BELIEF...

I feel David was a network/ agency with a great belief and energy eco-system...

It's unfortunate that it had an abrupt end. But what is important is that we lived the life of Davids...And hopefully will always retain it...

Murthy and Premji Over Breakfast

Mayank was kind enough to forward this link of the conversation between Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji arranged by ET. Like most Indians, am in awe of these two gentlemen who have transformed brand India over the years!

Some nuggets from this interview!

1. Premji - "Our experience as a company is that if your top management is not global, they tend to collect people who are of the same kin. It is the most difficult transformation."

Murthy - "What is a global mindset? It is about thinking of the whole world as your arena, being comfortable in interacting with people from multiple cultures, looking at the various markets while strategising, leveraging talent from all cultures, making sure that all cultures are comfortable in your milieu and that you have a fair representation of different cultures."

2. Murthy on the Tata-Corus deal - "When somebody writes the business history of India in the 2000s and 2100s, this will be described as a turning point in the history of the mindset of the Indian entrepreneur. That's what I'm excited about!"

3. Murthy on business then - "In 1981, when we founded Infosys, we were very clear from day one that we had to be focused on global markets. That was a tough exercise because the friction to business was extremely high then."

"It would take two to three years and 50 visits to Delhi to get a license to import a computer. We had to wait in front of the Reserve Bank of India for 10 days to travel abroad once. It was almost impossible to open offices abroad or get a consultant in marketing or in quality because there were severe restrictions on what you could pay them."

4. Murthy on Azim - "First of all, Azim is the least pretentious person. For example, he would call me once in a while and say, Murthy I want to meet you. I would say, look I'll get back to you when I am free and he would say, don't worry I'll talk to Pandu. Look, it is the chairman of Wipro who says he will speak to my secretary."

5. Premji on relationship with competition - "Relationships are getting multifaceted. As an example, we find that we are able to work with IBM mutually globally and we compete with them like hell in India. Particularly on large projects, we are competing all the time. At the same time, there is mutual collaboration and mutual competition."

6. Premji on China - "It’s both friends and foe. They are friends because we see them as part of our global delivery model. We see them downstream as a potential market like they see us as a downstream potential market. Their threat is because they are trying to emulate the India global delivery model in services and they will compete with us."

Okay, go ahead read the interview...Goes without saying, when the history of the great Indian awakening will be written, these two software titans would have a chapter each for their vision, innovativeness, courage and high ethical standards!