Remarkable People: Infosys Founder Narayana Murthy

Remarkable is a newsletter about remarkable people doing remarkable things. The goal is to personally interview each individual profiled. However, ten weeks in I find myself behind schedule on those interviews. To consistently publish the newsletter each week, some editions will contain profiles on remarkable people from publicly available sources. 

Remarkable People: Infosys Founder Narayana Murthy

Narayana Murthy is the founder of Infosys and a recipient of the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Global Innovation from the UVA Darden School of Business  A while back, Narayana Murthy sat down with Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley for a C-Suites Insights interview to share his story on founding Infosys, tips for today’s entrepreneurs, and his outlook on technology trends for the future. Murthy is known for his trailblazing work creating an entire industry for outsourcing IT to India.

When it comes to entrepreneurship, Murthy says first, an entrepreneur should have an idea whose differentiated business value to the market is expressed in a simple sentence. He says if you can express your idea in a simple sentence, you understand it well and can explain it better to others. Second, he notes entrepreneurship is all about deferred gratification. And third, he recommends assembling a team with a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive set of skills, expertise, and experience.

For corporations, Murthy notes good governance is all about maximizing shareholder value while ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability to all stakeholders and society; with society being the most important player because society gives back up the chain. If you can earn the respect of society, then you’re likely to go far.

When it comes to the technology field, Murthy says Automation is a big opportunity. It’s a big opportunity to improve the productivity of corporations. However, he adds, the very fact we’re embracing automation means we have to spend enough time and resources to ensure those people going to suffer because of it are retrained and deployed in activities where human touch is needed, where they won’t lose out on their livelihood, and the livelihood of their families.

In closing, Murthy says he’s a great believer in the power of the human mind. He says it’s the most powerful instrument that’s ever existed. He says the human mind is what will convert a plausible impossibility to a convincing possibility, adding we’ve seen how the human mind has transformed the world from the Stone Age to where we are today. You can view his full comments below:

ICYMI