Garnick: We kicked off a transformation my second day on the job. We changed the lens as far as who was our competition goes. Internally, I think they were competing with the domestic players. We really changed the firm's lens in order to look at the global landscape, not unlike GM. It took a long time for them to understand. Even up until three or four years ago when they did some competitive analysis of the market, General Motors looked only at Ford and Chrysler. It didn't even look at Toyota, Nissan, and Honda -; again that was only up until four or five years ago. So companies get it in their mind-set that their dominant logic is to not look at the broader perspective.
CM: So how should we expect Keane to enlarge its global capability going forward?
Garnick: We have a stated objective that we want to grow our global position faster than our U.S. one. We have stated that we're about 3,000 people in India today, up 60 percent from last year. The clear growth for our industry is the global model. It's grown at a 35 percent compounded annual growth rate over the last five years.
We need to take advantage of some of that growth. We've got to be perceived as a global player, so we've committed to be more than 10,000 people in India within three years. That's what we're committed to publicly.
CM: Having been part of Wipro's leadership team, you are aware of not only the organizational challenges offshore companies face as they seek to grow their high-value consulting capabilities, but also the cultural ones?
Garnick: Building a Western culture into those offshore pure-play models actually has dilutive effects and disruptive effects on a number of factors. One, at how they operate the business. And then it actually has deflationary effects on their overall market cap, because you make less margin with your onshore play, and it's actually dilutive on their margin. And it's counterintuitive, because Wall Street loves margins. And meanwhile their market cap is based on growth and margin growth. And so it's not in their interest, and what you'll see is that they'll talk a good game about moving up, but they can't do it.
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