Prez Kalam exhorts IBM to enrich its partnership with India

Bangalore, Jun 6: President A P J Abdul Kalam today exhorted world IT major IBM Corporation to forge enriched partnerships with the Indian knowledge product industry by utilising the youth asset.

Participating in the 'Innovation and Leadership Forum' meeting organised by the IBM here he said IBM's phenomenal growth was possible due to movitational and visionary slogan ''THINK'' coined by its founder Thomas J Watson.

IBM could identify three distinct areas to transform India into a knowledge society with innovation as the thrust area influencing the information, industrial and agricultural societies. With over 540 million youth below 25 years and the availability of the best 'Knowledge Workers' population in the world, IBM could launch a joint participation in the ''World Knowledge Platform'' which empowers IBM and its partner institutions with the collective core competence as a base.

Calling upon the IBM to grow in a dynamic and competitive environment, Dr Kalam said Indian Enterprises, IBM and the academic institutions, with their combined endeavour, could launch a system or a product that would be new to the world. ''The joint endeavour could launch a Tablet PC by taking up a joint design, development and manufacture of this handheld Personal Computer with multilingual operating system and software configured for the school students and common world citizens. IBM will have to do this which would cost less than 150 Dollars,'' the President said.

India and IBM could also think together to design, develop, produce and market nano computers with 10 tetrabytes, he said, quoting the successful example of joint venture between India and Russia on design, development and production of BrahMos supersonic missile which was first of its kind in the world.

He felt creative leadership would spearhead all institutions and the future aspiring institutions. For promoting growth of an organisation, the important thrust would be on the growth in the number of creative leaders and innovative personnel who could create wealth through dedicated management system, he added.

Karnataka Governor T N Chaturvedi and Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy and IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Samuel Palmisano also spoke before him.

UNI