I am back after attending the ‘Tata Marketing Minds 2007’ seminar which explored the subject of Innovation quite deeply. The 2 day seminar was held on the outskirts of Bangalore city, at a place called the Angsana Resort and Spa — a scenic and serene piece of land suited for knowledge building.
The event which was organized by Titan Industries, was kicked-off with a wonderful session by R Gopalakrishnan (ED – TataSons) who spoke about innovation and the history of the Tatas, quoting generously from the book ‘The Creation of Wealth’ by R M Lala. Eminent personalities from various industry domains spoke from branding and marketing to consumer goods and cyberspace innovations, and tried to touch upon the art of innovating ideas. Some of the speakers included Santosh Desai (Futurebrands), Richa Arora (Head of Marketing, Britannia), Alok Kejriwal (CEO, Contests2Win.com), R. Balki (Adman and director of the film Cheeni Mum), Vikram Kaushik (MD, TataSky Ltd.), C Venkataraman (COO, Titan Jewellery Division – Tanishq), Sashi Sinha (Lodestar), Bhaskar Bhatt (MD, Titan Industries) and more. For me personally it was scintillating to see Piyush Pandey (Chairman, O&M India) from close quarters; sort of a dream come true for me. I have idolised him since my art school days when his work for Fevicol was quite well-known and had won many awards.
The seminar provided a grand opportunity to network and get ourselves to know the other Tata Group companies and their projects as well. There were delegates from Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Ryerson, Tata Chemicals, Trent, Tata Teleservices, Tata Tinplate, Tata Pigments, VSNL, Tata Advanced Materials, Tata Consulting Engineers, Tata BP Solar, etc. just to name a few. I was of course, representing Tata Consultancy Services (thanks Jayant!). It was fun, educative and most importantly every member of the Tata group was filled with pride to know each other. Here are some pictures from those exciting days (enable JavaScript to have the best view).
