<strong>The future of digital enterprise in the post-pandemic era</strong><br /><br /><keyword id="13185080" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sharath-Srinivasamurthy" source="Orion">Sharath Srinivasamurthy</keyword>, Research Director, Enterprise Solutions and <keyword id="14326688" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="ict-practices-team" source="Orion">ICT Practices Team</keyword>, IDC, brings nearly two decades of experience in mapping Indian enterprises’ technology and <keyword id="860946" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="digital-transformation" source="Orion">digital transformation</keyword> journeys. In this extensive conversation with <em>Business Insider India</em>, he talks about how Indian organizations will accelerate their digital agendas, what their key priorities are and how the industry’s growing skills shortage can be addressed. <br /><br /><strong>Edited excerpts:</strong> <br /><br /><strong>Over two years into the massive shift to being ‘digital-first’, how are Indian enterprises reassessing the long-term impacts of their digital initiatives?</strong> <br /><br />Indian enterprises have shown tremendous resilience in the last two years, adapting well to the changing market dynamics. They have invested in large-scale reskilling of existing employees on digital technologies, hired new talent from the market, established strategic partnerships with various digital ecosystem players, developed solutions/IPs, set up innovation labs, and executed multiple acquisitions to develop new capabilities. <br /><br />The IDC <keyword id="14326687" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Future-Enterprise-Resiliency-Survey" source="Orion">Future Enterprise Resiliency Survey</keyword> (FERS), October 2021 shows that 92% of Indian enterprises realize the positive impact of digital transformation (DX) on the top and/or bottom line by 10% to 20%. Enterprises recognize that technology architecture is becoming business architecture and want to use technology to drive more revenue-generating activities.<br /><br />Indian enterprises will look to better position themselves against short-term volatility while staying on course toward long-term outcomes such as digital revenue growth. With the adoption of the ‘digital-first’ mentality, along with the ongoing pandemic, Indian enterprises are focusing on investments in technologies that drive automation of IT resources and business processes.<br /><br /><strong>In the post-pandemic era, if we may call it that, do you see this digital momentum continuing or will organizations take a pause to strategize further?</strong> <br /><br />The coming years will witness an acceleration in the adoption of digital technologies. In fact, IDC estimates emphasize that digital transformation (DX) spending in India is growing at a healthy compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.90% from 2020 to 2025 and is expected to approach $99 billion as companies build on existing strategies and investments, becoming digital-at-scale future enterprises.<br /><br />By 2023, a whopping 75% of Indian enterprises will have comprehensive digital transformation (DX) implementation roadmaps, up from 27% today, resulting in true transformation across all facets of business and society. <br /><br /><strong>What will be the key areas of focus for enterprises’ digital investments in this context?</strong> <br /><br />While the momentum will continue, Indian enterprises will focus on a few key areas to derive benefits out of their digital investments.<br /><br /><ul><li>Having the right KPIs to measure and convert them to business outcomes: Indian enterprises will relook at how they measure the effectiveness of their IT teams and investments. They need to tie IT initiatives to business outcomes. </li><li>Keeping pace with changing technology and being innovative: It is always difficult to keep pace with ever-changing technology. However, it is critical to experiment with new technologies. The mindset of innovation will be the focus of Indian enterprises. Innovation need not be something big, something pathbreaking. It can be incremental small changes, but they will add in the long run.</li><li>Developing a culture of agility: Indian enterprises will focus on agility in trying new products and services to keep improvising. Since there is an accelerated demand for digital technologies, the war for digital talent will continue in 2022 as well. Indian enterprises will continue to focus on reskilling existing employees with digital technologies</li><li>Harnessing data: It is critical to breaking the functional and data silos. Indian enterprises will focus on analyzing the data on an ongoing basis. They will leverage AI to manage their IT operations efficiency and reduce the cost of operations.</li></ul>Skill shortage is coming across as a major roadblock for organizations in achieving their innovation goals, especially around digital/cloud technologies, and AI. How is this affecting their digital transformation roadmaps? <br /><br />Transformation projects that would otherwise take ages to get approvals were given the green light due to the pandemic, as it became a necessity for Indian enterprises for continued operations and product delivery. With this acceleration came a realization that a lack of skills was creating a bottleneck in the transformation.<br /><br />DX-related IT skill shortages will affect 90% of global enterprises by 2025, costing over $6.5 trillion globally through 2025 due to delayed product releases, reduced customer satisfaction, and loss of business according to IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Work 2022 Predictions. <br /><br />When Indian enterprises are ‘underskilled, as opposed to understaffed, the consequences are similar, but the remediation is more complicated. The lack of skills has an adverse influence on the key business metrics including the profit line. <br /><br />Though a majority of the demand for skilled personnel is among IT professionals to implement and manage the technology underpinning the business transformation, there is also an increasing demand for digital skills in the business. These include leadership, analytics, coding, and managing projects in agile environments. Employees who have those skills can help take their businesses to the next level.<br /><br /><strong>How can Indian enterprises continue their DX journey against the growing skill shortage?</strong><br /><br />Indian enterprises have several choices to address the challenge of underskilled employees —focus on addressing skills shortages through training, engage third-party support, and automation of processes, while <keyword id="7771650" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="gig-workers" source="Orion">gig workers</keyword> are also being utilized.<br /><br />According to IDCs Digital Transformation survey, India 2022, Indian enterprises report that poor resource skills or the availability of the right skill set for digital transformation or infrastructure modernization is among the top three challenges that Indian enterprises encounter. Indian enterprises invested in online training to reskill employees on digital skills and be prepared for expansion plans once the crisis ends. <br /><br />Some are collaborating with third parties such as IT service providers to invest in reskilling existing employees to bridge the skill gap. Indian enterprises are also looking to automate processes to reduce the impact of skill shortages. The demand for gig workers has also risen as they are reliable in accomplishing a business plan within a limited time frame. There is an increased urgency to adopt AI in business processes to allow employees to focus on strategic and core functions instead of performing repetitive tasks in a traditional setup. <br /><br />So, Indian enterprises should take a hybrid approach of having skills in-house and partners who can bring the right skills to the table. Indian enterprises have built capabilities through reskilling and partnerships in the areas of digital technologies, customer experience, automation, cloud (migration and modernization) , next-gen security, AI, IoT, etc. Solving the skills equation has become a C-suite issue, and Indian enterprises are moving to create a culture of continuous learning and collaboration that will support their digital resiliency efforts in the future.<br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/india/news/maha-crisis-fadvanis-shinde-to-decide-the-next-course-of-action/articleshow/92543340.cms">Maha crisis: Fadvanis, Shinde to decide the next course of action</a><br /></strong><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/india/news/uddhav-thackeray-the-accidental-chief-minister/articleshow/92559485.cms"><strong>Uddhav Thackeray: The accidental chief minister</strong></a><br />

‘Tech architecture is becoming business architecture, enterprises recognize that’

<strong><br /></strong><ul><li><strong>The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is teaming up with <keyword id="10387" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Microsoft">Microsoft</keyword> India to train over 1,000 teachers.<br /></strong></li><li><strong>Under the initiative, every school can nominate two teachers for the training programmes.<br /></strong></li><li><strong>The last date to apply for the training programme is 9 September 2019.<br /></strong></li><li><strong>The training opportunity will open doors for teachers to become Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) and receive certifications on digital technologies.</strong></li></ul>The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is<a href="https://www.financialexpress.com/education-2/cbse-joins-hands-with-microsoft-to-train-1000-teachers-apply-before-september-9-to-participate/1696350/"> teaming up </a>with Microsoft India to train over 1,000 teachers. The move aims to improve accessibility to Information and Community Technology (ICT) tools with its capacity building programme.<br /><br />ICT was introduced in 2004 by the Indian government to promote computer-aided learning via labs and digital tools. The initiative will help teachers to blend in technology with the learning process. <br /><br />The training opportunity will open doors for teachers to become Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) and receive certifications on digital technologies.<br /><br />Under this, every school can nominate two teachers for the training. Interested teachers can apply for the programme<a href="https://bit.ly/2Zmt6Bn"> here.</a><br /><br />The training programme will include practical sessions on MS Office 365 along with knowledge of digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence, gamification through Minecraft, OneNote and Flipgrid among others.<br /><br />It will also equip teachers with literacy tools to improve students’ reading, writing and fluency in languages. The teachers can use cloud platform to interact with global educators to enhance student experience. They will also be able to create bots using <keyword id="4287257" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="microsoft-cognitive-services">Microsoft cognitive services</keyword>. <br /><br /><strong>See also:</strong><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india-draft-national-education-policy-one-common-admission-entrance-test/articleshow/69825504.cms">India may have one common exam for all college admissions-- if the draft National Education Policy is passed</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/all-india-radio-to-air-english-learning-programme-from-1-september/articleshow/70673187.cms">This is All India Radio, and let us now start learning English</a><br />

CBSE teams up with Microsoft to train 1,000 teachers to boost computer-aided learning

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/565df3a369bedd1e4fa33517-2400/rtx1tc02.jpg" alt="Microsoft" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Lucas Jackson" /><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Lucas Jackson</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Microsoft has set up its own internal "university" to train Microsoft staff in the field of artificial intelligence. </strong></li><li><strong>The company is also looking to hire people at machine learning conferences likes NIPS. </strong></li><li><strong>Chris Bishop, head of the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, said he's keen to avoid "hoovering" up AI professors from universities. </strong></li></ul><hr /><p><br />Microsoft has set up an internal "AI University" in a bid to help it overcome the skills shortage in the booming field of artificial intelligence (AI).</p><p>Chris Bishop, the director of a Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, UK, told Business Insider that the Microsoft AI University is one of several schemes Microsoft has implemented to address the lack of talent in the field of AI, where there's fierce competition between tech firms to hire the best people.</p><p>"We have a thing called AI University, which is an internal education programme so that people who are incredibly smart and capable but trained in a different domain can quickly learn about machine learning both in a foundational sense but also in a practical sense of how to use it," said Bishop.</p><p>When it comes to AI talent, Microsoft is competing with the likes of Amazon and Apple, who also have research offices in Cambridge, as well as DeepMind (owned by Google), Facebook, Twitter, and many others.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5a2568f8f914c346018b7a48-1067/chris bishop june 2015 image 3.jpg" alt="Chris Bishop June 2015 Image 3" data-mce-source="Microsoft" /><p class="source"><span>Microsoft</span></p><p class="caption">Chris Bishop is the head of a Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The global battle for talent is raging because of the potential AI breakthroughs that bright minds stand to make in the next few years thanks to recent advances in computation power and the availability of vast data sets.</p><p>AI is now at the core of almost all of the big tech companies' major products (think Apple's iPhone, Amazon Echo, Microsoft Surface, etc) and even fairly small advances in areas like speech recognition and image search could have a big impact on profits.</p><p>In a bid to attract the most capable people, the multibillion dollar tech giants are offering annual salaries in the hundreds of thousands of pounds and some people leading AI-focused teams at these companies are earning over £1 million a year, according to multiple sources that Business Insider has spoken to.</p><h2>How Microsoft is recruiting AI talent</h2><p>Microsoft is also trying to bring people into the company by finding talent at conferences and sponsoring students through university on the condition that they take a job when they've finished studying.</p><p>The Redmond-headquartered company has set up a large stand at an AI conference in LA this week called NIPS (The Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems), where Bishop and his team hope to recruit a number of people.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5a2937473dbef4db018ba9b6-2400/img0575 2.jpg" alt="Cambridge computer science lab" data-mce-source="Business Insider UK/Sam Shead" /><p class="source"><span>Business Insider UK/Sam Shead</span></p><p class="caption">The computer science department at Cambridge University.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Unlike some other companies, Microsoft is keen to avoid hiring all the best AI professors straight out of university, according to Bishop.</p><p>"One of the things we're trying to avoid doing is simply going into a university, hoovering up all the top professors and then just leaving tumbleweed blowing down the corridors," he said.</p><p>"That might be a short term fix for some companies but I don't think it serves even the industry itself very well, let alone academia or the nation, to take that rather short term view."</p><p>Dozens of AI researchers have left Oxford and Cambridge over the last few years <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/oxbridge-ai-researchers-to-deepmind-2016-11" target="_blank" rel="noopener">for what are likely to be better-paid roles at DeepMind</a>, according to LinkedIn.</p><p>Irina Higgins, for example, left her role as a machine learning tutor at Oxford in April 2015 before joining DeepMind as a research scientist in June of the same year. Higgins also completed a PhD in computational neuroscience and artificial intelligence at Oxford before leaving to join DeepMind.</p><p>Salaries at DeepMind averaged $345,000 (£258,000) in 2016, according to UK regulatory filings <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/demand-for-ai-talent-turns-once-staid-conference-into-draft-day" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cited by Bloomberg</a>. </p><p>Bishop, who declined to comment on DeepMind's hiring, said his lab is funding masters degrees and PhDs at the University of Cambridge and other schools in a bid to spot talent early and get it on side.</p><p>"We try to work with them [universities] to fuel that talent pipeline," said Bishop. "So for example we're a major sponsor of a masters programme at Cambridge University." Bishop added that Microsoft Research has funded around 200 PhD scholarships at the centuries-old institution.</p><p>Other tech firms, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/deepmind-stepped-up-to-fund-a-medical-students-masters-degree-2017-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">including DeepMind</a>, are also funding students through university but perhaps not on the same scale. Researchers from <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/deepmind-ai-experts-are-going-to-teach-at-ucl-2017-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DeepMind are also giving AI and machine learning lectures to students</a>, and some are even acting as PhD supervisors.</p><p>Staff from Microsoft Research in Cambridge also helped to develop the UK's new "computing" curriculum, <a href="http://www.rm.com/blog/2015/june/how-computing-replaced-ict" target="_blank" rel="noopener">which replaced ICT in 2014.</a></p><p class="tagline">Get the latest Microsoft stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/MSFT-Quote"> here.</a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-snapchat-photos-taken-android-look-terrible-bad-iphone-app-developers-2017-11">The real reason Snapchat photos taken on Android phones look terrible</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/ChKEz5xb-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

Microsoft has set up an internal AI University to try and get around the skills shortage

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59f0a8718280a61d008b4c28-910/gettyimages-495498530.jpg" alt="Al Gore" data-mce-source="Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for New York Times" data-mce-caption="Former Vice President Al Gore, chairman of Generation Investment Management and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, participates in a panel discussion at the New York Times 2015 DealBook Conference at the Whitney Museum of American Art on November 3, 2015 in New York City. ()" /><p class="source"><span>Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for New York Times</span></p><p class="caption">Former US Vice President Al Gore, chairman of Generation Investment Management, in 2015.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Since leaving public office, former US Vice President Al Gore has been working on Generation Investment Management, an $18 billion asset manager that invests in what it considers sustainable companies.</strong></li><li><strong>Generation has performed well. The company's public-equity vehicle returned about 17.5% after fees since September 2014, compared to the MSCI World index, which returned 6.6% over the same period.</strong></li><li><strong>Gore teamed up with David Blood, former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.</strong></li></ul><hr /><p><em><br /></em>For Generation Investment Management, making money and saving the world go hand in hand.</p><p>London-based Generation was cofounded by former US Vice President Al Gore and Goldman Sachs Asset Management head David Blood. The $18 billion firm, which launched in 2004 and takes a sustainable approach to investing, chooses companies it thinks will be successful in the long term.</p><p>Among the requirements, the companies must provide products or services that have a low-carbon footprint and, in Generation's words, lead to a "prosperous, equitable, healthy, and safe society."</p><p>While Generation is a relatively small player in the investing world - the firm employs about 100 people and its competitors manage well into the trillions - its investment picks have performed well. The company's public-equity vehicle returned about 17.5% after fees since September 2014, according to the McKnight Foundation. That's a hefty gain compared to the MSCI World index, which returned 6.6% over the same period.</p><p>In 2010, the firm closed its stock-focused Global Equity fund to new money over concerns that it would get too big otherwise to deliver returns.</p><p>"When a fund manager tells you, 'Oh, the size of our fund doesn't matter - we can still deploy capital, et cetera,' that's also a good time to not trust them anymore," Blood said in an interview with Business Insider.</p><p>While the bulk of its $18 billion are invested in public markets, the firm has about $1 billion dedicated to private equity. The firm plans to build the growth-equity franchise in the years ahead. Generation's growth-equity investments include bicycle-share operator Motivate, which is behind New York's Citi Bike; electric-bus startup Proterra; and Taiwanese electric-scooter maker Gogoro. The firm also backed Toast, a digital platform for restaurants that Generation said would help reduce food waste and digitize paper processes.</p><p>The company has also invested in mainstream companies like Microsoft and Qualcomm, the leading chipmaker for mobile phones. The firm recently announced it is moving to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/al-gores-generation-investment-firm-moves-office-to-san-francisco-2017-10">San Francisco to focus on tech companies and Asia</a>.</p><p>Business Insider recently spoke with Gore and Blood, who both founded the firm. Here are some highlights from the conversation.</p><h2><strong>On the firm's performance figures.</strong></h2><p><strong>Al Gore:</strong> Our whole mission is to prove the business case that investing according to a model that fully integrates all aspects of sustainability into every part of the investing process can produce better returns. If we continue to succeed in proving that that is in fact the case, then that is a more eloquent and persuasive way to advocate for the importance of sustainability than anything we could actually say to you.</p><h2><strong>On the firm's mission.</strong></h2><p><strong>David Blood:</strong> The way we say it on our website is kind of how we recite it, so it's probably worth just repeating that for you, to say: <em>We're an investment firm dedicated to investing in sustainable companies that provide goods and services consistent with a low-carbon, prosperous, equitable, and safe society. </em></p><p><strong>Gore:</strong> I was just going to add that, in layman's terms, it's important to note that sustainability includes, but is certainly not limited to, climate and environment. Human-resources practices, the treatment of communities where companies are active, their employees, their healthcare, the values and ethics in the C-suites - there are many aspects to sustainability. While the environment and climate are extremely important to us, we look first and foremost at the sustainability factors that are most materially important in the particular sector a company finds itself.</p><h2><strong>On the value of sustainable investing.</strong></h2><p><strong>Blood:</strong> Part of this is what we've learned over these years, but, most important, you should think of sustainability in three ways: One, it's a terrific risk-management tool. If you're more holistic in terms of how you are analyzing management quality and business quality, chances are better - although not guaranteed - that you will be able to identify the types of risk that can hurt a company badly.</p><p>For example, if you can avoid investing in a company that is dumping a lot of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, that's probably a good thing. If you can avoid investing in companies that are price gouging from a healthcare perspective, that's probably a good thing. If you can avoid companies that are manipulating their mileage statements, and they get found out about that, that's typically a good thing. If you can avoid corporate-governance challenges, all of those are questions and sustainability sheds lights, no guarantee.</p><p>Secondly, we live in a resource-constrained world, whether that be human capital or inputs to manufacturing processes, and we felt that management can understand how minimize the use of assets that often leads to better economics and more robust business models.</p><p>Then the most exciting is if we can identify businesses that through their products and services are addressing real needs, whether that be climate change or challenges around poverty, if we can find businesses that are a part of the solution to health challenges, those businesses, assuming they have other good characteristics, are businesses that we like to invest in.</p><h2><strong>On investing in companies like Microsoft.</strong></h2><p><strong>Blood:</strong> Yes, we do invest in a number of mainstream companies, but all will have a long-term orientation to them. All will be very holistic in how they think about running their businesses, and all, hopefully, will be part of the solution to the long-term sustainability challenges that the world faces.</p><p>In fact, actually, one of our clients said this about us, so I can't claim it ourselves, but they basically noted that the way we think about it is that sustainability is an organizing imperative for the global economy. That's what we believe is happening. That's what we call the sustainability revolution. Al is much more articulate on this than I am. But that's our framework, that's what we're thinking about in terms of our stock selection and our company selection. We see that this is increasingly the way the world is going.</p><h2><strong>On a 'sustainability revolution.'</strong></h2><p><strong>Gore:</strong> We have a conviction, based on our work over the last 15 years, that the world is in the early stages of a sustainability revolution that has the scope and scale of the industrial revolution with the speed of the digital revolution. Engineers and management teams, designers, technologist, are now acquiring an extraordinary ability to manage molecules and atoms with the same precision we've come to expect from ICT companies in managing bits of information.</p><p>The imperative to use the new digital tools - not least among them the Internet of Things and progressively more efficacious machine learning and artificial intelligence - to achieve much higher levels of efficiency is really sweeping the world and leading to a global retooling in almost every sector of the economy. Emissions, greenhouses gasses, have been decoupled from GDP. We saw that early on in economies like that in California. Now we're seeing it spread throughout the world.</p><h2><strong>On why the fund won't open up to retail investors.</strong></h2><p><strong>Blood:</strong> Well, it's a really good question and a number of folks have asked us that over the past.</p><p>Generation - we closed our global equity fund in 2010 - and the reason why we did so is we had a view that if we allowed the fund to get too large, then the possibility of our not delivering important investment results to our clients would go up. It's my experience, being in this industry for some time, often times the other rule - I told you that as soon as a fund manager tells you how smart they are, that's usually a bad sign. The other rule is that when a fund manager tells you "Oh, the size of our fund doesn't matter - we can still deploy capital, et cetera," that's also a good time to not trust them anymore.</p><p>We told our clients from the very beginning that we would close our fund when we thought we were reaching capacity. We did that in 2010. We allow new clients if old clients redeem. We really can't open our fund up to the broader retail marketplace because we don't have capacity to do so.</p><h2><strong>On the rise of mission-oriented companies.</strong></h2><p><strong>Blood:</strong> The number of companies who are mission-oriented, that are driving toward being part of the solution to the sustainability revolution, the examples of businesses like that have multiplied and accelerated over the course of the last five years. So we see great entrepreneurs.</p><p>Again, this is one of the reasons we're moving to California. We see great entrepreneurs who are embracing sustainability to drive their ideas and their business models. That's for sure.</p><p>Secondly, the larger companies very often have always embraced long-term sustainable ideas into their business models. Certainly the very best business leaders have done so. They may not have called it "sustainability," but that's how they've thought about it over the years.</p><p>We see great CEOs who embrace sustainability building really excellent business franchises. Admittedly, we see more of them today than we did 10 or 15 years ago, but sustainability - and we all, with the exception of Richard, have American accents - outside of America sustainability isn't such a weird concept. It's how people live their lives and have embraced sustainability for many, many years.</p><p>That's a long way of saying: This is no longer kind of a niche conversation; this is really mainstream and will be certainly for the next couple of years. Why? Because the economics, the business case, is robust, it's clear, and it's really driving business decisions and entrepreneurs.</p><h2><strong>On sustainability being a central part of the conversation:</strong></h2><p><strong>Gore:</strong> During our first decade, it was extremely common for companies and executive teams of companies where we invest or where we are considering an investment to say to our team members, "You know, this is the first time we have been asked that question." I like that so much, but in the last few years the kinds of questions that have been a central part of our process are now in the public arena.</p><p>CEOs themselves are talking more openly about it. Their executive teams are integrating this new way of thinking. It's important not to just focus on the language of this or that buzz phrase, but to dig truly and deeply into what sustainability means and how it differs in each sector. That's hard work. You can't do it with a negative screen or a positive screen or a separate layer that is spread across an older legacy investment process. You really have to integrate it into the entire process. We take great heart from the way these ideas are spreading.</p><h2><strong>On the impact of sustainable investing.</strong></h2><p><strong>Blood:</strong> We already see it changing. This is somewhat aspirational, but we really think it's achievable, attainable, and imminent. If we can collectively push capital markets and capitalism to be more long term, more holistic, we will have a more fair society, and we'll have a low carbon economy. That's better for the planet and better for people. No question about that.</p><h2><strong>On staying small.</strong></h2><p><strong>Blood:</strong> There are some very, very large active managers that have had some important success, but most of them have had pedestrian results because ultimately their strategy has not been able to consistently outperform the market.</p><p>What we've discovered is that the very best way to outperform the market is to stay very research-focused and concentrated in the stocks that you select. That allows you to basically run with your best ideas, and we think that that - with differentiated insight, in our case, sustainability - facilitates an opportunity to outperform.</p><p>If you look at the very best equity managers, most of them are boutiques, and most of them are closed like we are. Sustainability isn't the constraint. The constraint is a passion around ensuring outsized results for our clients.</p><p><em>With assistance from Graham Rapier.</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-turnill-blackrock-chief-investment-strategist-interview-2017-10">We talked to the chief investment strategist at $6 trillion fund giant BlackRock about stocks, bitcoin, and the Fed</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/mbCDUGkI-xjRU7l6Z.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

You Searched For "ict practices team" and got 5 results

‘Tech architecture is becoming business architecture, enterprises recognize that’

Radhika Nallayam

CBSE teams up with Microsoft to train 1,000 teachers to boost computer-aided learning

Prerna Sindwani

Microsoft has set up an internal AI University to try and get around the skills shortage

Sam Shead

Al Gore and David Blood told us how it's possible to save the world while still making a lot of money

Rachael Levy,Dana Varinsky

The entire list and a brief profile of 'Delhi ke nirmata'⁠— the makers of Delhi felicitated at Kejriwal's oath taking ceremony

BI India Bureau