超越谷歌：硅谷下一个领导者
BBC尼克·克莱顿（Nick Clayton）(2016年2月20日)
谷歌CEO桑达尔·皮查伊（Sundar Pichai）出生于印度金奈。（图片来源：Justin Sullivan/Getty）
谷歌（Google）的诞生离不开一个印度人。
1998年在斯坦福大学，这个互联网巨头公司的两位创始人，研究生谢尔盖·布林（Sergey Brin）和拉里·佩奇（Larry Page），以及大学教师特里·威诺格拉德（Terry Winograd）和拉杰夫·莫特瓦尼（Rajeev Motwani），共同研发出一种算法，彻底变革了网络搜索，并创立了一家资产达数十亿美元的公司。
莫特瓦尼是谷歌第一个员工克雷格·西尔弗斯坦（Craig Silverstein）的大学老师，据说即使是现在，他说话的语调仍然与现年43岁的谷歌新任CEO桑达尔·皮查伊（Sundar Pichai）一样低沉有力。这两个人都有着过人的智力和积极性，但同时也有着谦卑的心态，而这些都是与印度高管日益相关的特质。他们在美国读研前，都曾就读于印度理工学院。
如果你在印度长大，你会本能地知道，人与人是不一样的，并不是出众，只是不同而已。
皮查伊是一个工程师的儿子，住在南部城市金奈，对他而言，能去美国留学实属不易。他到美国的机票钱比他父亲的年薪还高，这导致他半年不能与他未来的妻子通电话。他与他未来的妻子是在印度上学时认识的。
他2004年加入谷歌时，曾在麦肯锡（McKinsey）管理咨询公司和微处理器供应商应用材料（Applied Materials）公司工作过。作为谷歌非常成功的Chrome浏览器的设计师，皮查伊声名鹊起，长期以来一直担任重要职位。
模式转变
历任CEO大多都以自我为中心、比较强势并且容易造成不和，习惯于通过从容对抗来提高员工个人、团队和竞争公司的质量、竞争力和生产力，但他的行事风格与之不同。他转变了公司目前的管理风格，将管理重心从处理对抗转变为避免对抗。这是一种柔和的风格，如今一些新一代印度高管都具有这种风格。
这是微软（Microsoft）让萨蒂亚·纳德拉（Satya Nadellaits）取代史蒂夫·鲍尔默（Steve Ballmer）担任第三任CEO的原因之一。他不是受欢迎的唯一印度高管。日本跨国电信公司软银（SoftBank）也让谷歌高管尼科什·阿罗拉（Nikesh Arora）担任其公司总裁。Adobe目前由山塔努·纳拉延（Shantanu Narayen）管理运营。弗朗西斯科·德索萨（Francisco D'Souza）是IT咨询公司高知特（Cognizant）的领导。而桑杰·梅赫罗特拉（Sanjay Mehrotra）则是内存巨头闪迪（SanDisk）公司的领导。
在全球科技公司中，印度人担任领导的还有很多。伊凡·梅内塞斯（Ivan Menezes）是全球最大烈酒生产商帝亚吉欧（Diageo）的CEO。万事达（MasterCard）公司的老总是阿杰伊·邦格阿（Ajay Banga）。百事（PepsiCo）公司是由英德拉·努伊（Indra Nooyi）领导，她是最近高调跻身高层的唯一印度女性领导。
百事公司是由英德拉·努伊（Indra Nooyi）领导，她是最近跻身高层的唯一印度女性领导。（图片来源：Amy Sussman/Getty）
他们通往成功的秘诀远远超出他们在公司职位上步步高升的能力。在硅谷的员工中，大约有6％是印度人。不过，在硅谷创业公司中，有超过15％的公司的创始人就在那6％的人当中。
维韦克·瓦德瓦教授（Vivek Wadhwa）在2014年进行的一项研究显示，这比那些来自英国、中国、台湾和日本的人数总和还多。维韦克·瓦德瓦是一位企业家，出生于印度，在美国奇点大学、斯坦福大学和杜克大学担任学术职务。研究表明，在整个美国，近三分之一的创业公司是由印度人创办的，数量上超过其他七个移民群体总和。
根据2010年人口普查资料，最新的数据显示，印度裔美国人的平均家庭年收入最高，为86,135美元，而美国人口总年收入为51,914美元。
顶尖人才
那么，是什么让这些印度人取得如此惊人的成功呢？
有些因素是显而易见的。其他美国移民需要学习新语言。但是几乎所有的印度高等教育都以英语授课，这是该国的殖民地历史遗留下来的传统。
印度企业家协会（The Indus Entrepreneurs）硅谷分会会长、风险投资人维克提什·舒克拉（Venktesh Shukla）表示，目前这些印度CEO也是他们这一代的精英。
他说：“他们大多数是在印度社会主义时代来到这里，那时的机会非常有限，当时美国的移民政策只对最优秀的人士开放。所以他们是精英中的精英。”
了解多样性
但这并不全依靠学历。
舒克拉也认为，印度文化可以帮助建立一个成功的管理模式，他说，因为这是一个既高度重视竞争，也高度重视个人谦逊态度的国家。多样性也深深植根于这个国家，即使是在小村庄，也可能有多种语言、多个宗教和多类当地美食。
“如果你在印度长大，你会本能地知道，人与人是不一样的，并不是出众，只是不同而已。在硅谷，利用多样性的能力是一种实力，如果你能获得更多的收益，或提供更好的产品，不管你长什么样或讲什么语言，都没关系。”
跨国心理咨询公司YSC的创始人兼董事长、《文化DNA：全球化心理学》（Cultural DNA: The Psychology of Globalization）的作者格尼克·贝恩斯（Gurnek Bains）补充说，对多样性的这种根深蒂固的认识也源自印度诸多神明、多重现实和多维视角的传统。
贝恩斯的公司对世界各地的商界领袖进行了深入评估，他说：“这也意味着他们可以快速适应诸如IT等瞬息万变的行业。”贝恩斯表示，美国人更可能“认为：‘这是正确的行事方法。它在美国很有效。’”
贝恩斯说，YSC对全球每个地区的200位高管进行了评估，而这项研究就是在对这些评估内容进行分析的基础上得出的，研究还表明，印度人有着强烈的成功意识，还拥有异常强大的知识领域。
尽管如此，没有人是完美的。尽管他们有这么多优点，但也有一个重大缺点。贝恩斯说，研究结果表明“印度高管是所有国家中最不擅长团队合作的”，而在这方面美国人和欧洲人很擅长。
前进之路
就目前来看，成为公司高管或杰出企业家的最佳途径可能植根于印度并在国外实现。贝恩斯补充说，在跨国公司表现最好的印度高管是那些长期背井离乡、在异国培养团队合作能力的人。
瓦德瓦是第一位在美国赢得盛名的印度籍高科技企业家，他说：“印度各地的年轻人都在关注微软和谷歌的新任CEO，微软和谷歌是他们最常使用的两个品牌，而这两位CEO都是印度人。这是激励和鼓舞这些年轻人将来变成像他们一样的人。”
瓦德瓦继续说道，但很快这些年轻人可能不需要再去美国效仿他们的成功，因为按某种指标衡量，印度成为位居美国和中国之后的全球第三大经济体。
与他们的前辈不同，今天的年轻一代可能只是想留在原地。
他说：“在印度，未来三至五年，将有五亿人使用智能手机上网。那时会出现一次技术革命。你会看到资产几十个亿美元的公司走出印度。如果我是企业家，我不会来美国。我会留在印度，因为那里就有机会。”
（责编：友义）
Google and beyond: The new Silicon Valley kingpins
By Nick Clayton,20 February 2024
Google was born with an Indian at its heart.
In 1998 at Stanford University, the internet giant’s two founders, graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page, alongside academics Terry Winograd and Rajeev Motwani, developed an algorithm that revolutionised web search and created a multibillion-dollar company.
Even now, Motwani, who taught Google's first ever employee, Craig Silverstein, at university, is talked of in the same hushed tones as new Google CEO, 43-year-old Sundar Pichai. Both men are described as intellectually brilliant and driven, yet also possessing a sense of humility — traits increasingly associated with top Indian execs. And both studied at Indian Institutes of Technology before continuing their postgraduate education in the US.
If you've grown up in India you instinctively know people are different, not superior, just different.
Making the move abroad wasn't easy for Pichai, the son of an engineer in the southern city of Chennai. His plane ticket to America cost more than his father's annual salary and for six months he couldn't afford to phone his future wife whom he had met while studying in India.
By the time he joined Google in 2004, he had worked at both management consultant, McKinsey and microprocessor supplier Applied Materials. Pichai rose to prominence as the architect of Google's phenomenally successful Chrome browser and has long been tipped for a top post.
A paradigm shift
His ascent came as the global tech industry fell out of love with the egocentric, abrasive and often divisive style of many of its CEOs, who used deliberate confrontation to improve quality, competitiveness and productivity between individual employees, teams and rival firms. The current fashion, though, has shifted to a style of management that isn’t so much better at handling confrontation as it is avoiding it in the first place. And it's a sort of emollient style that some of this next generation of Indian executives are seen to possess.
It was one of the reasons why Microsoft made Satya Nadella its its third CEO, replacing Steve Ballmer. He wasn't the only Indian executive in demand. Japanese telecoms multinational SoftBank also brought in Google executive Nikesh Arora as its president. Adobe is run by Shantanu Narayen. Francisco D'Souza heads giant IT consultancy Cognizant. And Sanjay Mehrotra leads computer memory giant SanDisk.
And it isn’t just at global technology companies where Indians are taking the lead. Ivan Menezes is the CEO of Diageo, the world's largest producer of alcoholic spirits. MasterCard's boss is Ajay Banga. And PepsiCo is led by Indra Nooyi, one of the only high profile Indian female leaders to rise to the top recently.
The secret to their success goes far beyond their ability to climb the corporate ladder. Indians now make up around 6% of the Silicon Valley workforce. But, from that 6% come the founders of more than 15% of Silicon Valley start-ups.
That's more than those from Britain, China, Taiwan and Japan combined, according to a 2014 study by Professor Vivek Wadhwa, the Indian-born entrepreneur who holds academic positions in US universities: Singularity, Stanford and Duke. In the US as a whole, the study shows, almost a third of start-ups are launched by Indians, outnumbering the next seven immigrant groups combined.
According to 2010 census data, the most recent figures available, Indian Americans have the highest average annual household income of any group at $86,135 compared with $51,914 for the total US population.
Cream of the crop
So, what makes this group of Indians so phenomenally successful?
Some elements are obvious. Other US immigrants have to learn to speak a new language. But almost all higher education in India is conducted in English, a legacy of the country's colonial past.
The ability to leverage diversity is a strength here in Silicon Valley, where, if you can get more revenue or deliver a better product it doesn't matter what you look like or how you speak.
The current crop of Indian CEOs also represent the cream their generation, according to venture capitalist Venktesh Shukla, who is president of the Silicon Valley branch of networking organisation The Indus Entrepreneurs.
"They mostly came here in the days of socialism in India when opportunities were very limited and United States immigration policy only let in the most highly qualified," he said. "So what you have here is the best of the best."
Understanding diversity
But it’s not all about academic qualifications.
Shukla also believes that Indian culture can help create a successful management paradigm because he says it's a nation that places high value on both competition and individual humility. Diversity is also ingrained in a country where even in small villages there may be multiple languages spoken, several religions and more than one type of local cuisine.
"If you've grown up in India you instinctively know people are different, not superior, just different. The ability to leverage diversity is a strength here in Silicon Valley where if you can get more revenue or deliver a better product it doesn't matter what you look like or how you speak."
Gurnek Bains, founder and chairman of a global business psychology consultancy YSC and author of Cultural DNA: The Psychology of Globalization added that this ingrained understanding of diversity also comes from the Indian traditions of multiple gods, multiple realities and multiple perspectives.
"It also means they can engage the ambiguity of a fast-changing world in industries such as IT," said Bains, whose company carries out in-depth assessments of business leaders around the world. Bains suggested that Americans are more likely “to think: ‘This is the right way of doing things. It works in America.’ ”
The research, based on content analysis of YSC's assessments of 200 executives from each of the world's regions, also revealed that Indians have a strong will to achieve and, are unusually strong in the intellectual domain, Bains said.
Still, no one is perfect. For all their strengths, there is a major flaw. "Indian executives are the weakest of any country when it comes to teamwork," according to the research Bains said, of an area where Americans and Europeans do well.
The path forward
For now, it seems the best path to the top of the executive or entrepreneurial tree might be rooted in India and finished abroad. And those Indian executives who do best at multinational companies, Bains added, are those who've spent a long time outside their home country developing their teamwork skills.
“Kids all over India are looking at the new CEOs of Microsoft and Google, the two brands they use most, and they're Indian,” said Wadhwa, who first made his name as an Indian-born tech entrepreneur in America. “This is motivating and inspiring those kids to become like them.”
But soon they may not need to travel to the US to emulate their success, Wadhwa continued, as by one measure India becomes the third-largest economy in the world after the US and China.
Unlike their predecessors, today’s young generation may just want to stay put.
“In next three to five years in India, half a billion people are going to be coming online using smartphones. You're going to see a tech revolution there. You're going to see dozens of billion dollar companies coming out of India,” he said. “If I was an entrepreneur I wouldn't come to America. I'd stay in India right now because that's where the opportunities are.”