Digital transformation, AI, and a chance encounter

Prof. Jürgen Weigand: My name is Jurgen Weigand. I'm a professor of economics and the associate dean for post-experience programs at the German Business School called WHU, Otto Beisheim School of Management.

What is your experience with digital transformation?
I've worked with quite a number of companies across all sizes. While digital transformation has been a big buzzword in Germany for the past almost 10 years, it was driven very much by the German government putting a lot of emphasis into becoming 4.0 industry or economy. But at the company level, it has taken quite a long time until companies really understood what they have to do in terms of digital transformation. It's still going on. Also at the large corporates, they're still struggling what exactly means to completely digitally transform and what we do with our employees to make them savvy enough for, well, what's new, basically AI and things like that.

What is your take on AI?
I've heard this question many times over, and of course it matters a lot how you define AI. AI as such is a very broad theme. In the specifics, they really do matter. So what I have observed at companies is that they try to increase productivity by using AI tools. And I think that makes a lot of sense. There's also the word out there that AI would replace people. I don't really buy that because as an economist, I've been trained also in economic growth and there you learn that once you release people from one area, you can use them skilled up somewhere else. And I think this is going to happen as well with AI. It's going to be a very useful, a very efficient way of increasing productivity, but there will be still room enough for skilled people.

What is your definitive of responsible leadership?
Responsible leadership, from my perspective, means that I am the leader and I'm responsible for my teams and I'm responsible for what my teams will be doing and I'm also accountable at the end of the day. I can't blame anyone else. So responsibility includes accountability. Now, in the era of AI and digital, it means a little bit of a different thing because you might be remote from your people but still you have to get across what you expect from them and how you can support them.

Responsible leadership is also some kind of servant leadership. You have to help your people achieve the goals set by you or by your organization. And that still needs personal exchange. We have to still meet in-person to somehow feel who we are and how we can work together. Although efficiently, we can use digital tools like Zoom or Teams for meetings, but at the end of the day, what really counts in leadership is the personal exchange. You have to get along with each other. And that means we have to meet, we have to talk to each other, we have to understand each other, where we are and where we want to go.

Tell us about your change encounter on a flight.
Yeah, that's quite an interesting story. I've been taking MBA students from our school to Bangalore since 2005. And on a flight in 2008 from Frankfurt to Bangalore, I met one of the founders of Infosys. I was sitting right next to a senior vice president of Pepsi, and we were chatting and he asked me, "What are you going to do in Bangalore?" Said, "Well, we will be there with our MBA students and we're also going to do company visits." He said, "What kind of companies are you going to visit?" And I mentioned a few and I said, "Also, of course, Infosys." And then he smiled and said, "You know who's sitting in front of us?" "I don't know. I have no idea." "The COO of Infosys, Mr. Shibulal." And I said, "Oh, this is really interesting." And he said, "Come on. I will introduce you to him."

So this is how it happened that we met in 2008. And it was the first time that I came to campus here. And Mr. Shibulal and I had a very nice conversation about the Infosys expansion in Germany. And the end of the story is the following, in 2009, in 2010, Mr. Shibulal I met in Frankfurt Airport without having aligned each other and we were like, "What are you doing here?" And I said, "Well, I'm flying out to Bangalore." And I said, "What are you doing?" "I'm flying out to Bangalore." So that's the funny part. And since then we've been in touch. And until he resigned here from Infosys, I've met him quite a couple of times. I also went to the wedding of his daughter. So there's quite a connection.

How did you advise Infosys about building business in Germany?
So when I first came in touch with Infosys, I knew that they were already in Germany, but they had a very small outfit. And when I started my conversations here with Mr. Shibulal and then also with the head of strategy at that time, Sanjay Purohit, it was about, "Should we expand in Germany? Or should we rather do something else? Leave Germany because they are the big players like Accenture, HP and so on who were all running after big deals?" And I said, "Well, from my perspective, and I did quite some research on the German IT industry, it's worthwhile to stay on, to put a little bit more effort into that. And specifically, you need to gain visibility. You can't just knock at the doors of the CEOs of German companies and think they would invite you to do a deal with you. So you first have to become really visible." And it started, I would guess, with having headquarters of Infosys Germany in Frankfurt, in a very prominent area of Frankfurt. And from there, well, Infosys really expanded as I have observed very well over the next couple of years.