About the Role Model: Narayan Murthy believes and lives by the principles of integrity, values, deferred gratification, and courage. He built an excellent core team at Infosys by surrounding himself with others committed to his vision and values. Certificates and degrees were less important than principled people who shared the organization’s values. Throughout the rise of Infosys, Murthy attempted to remain true to the values established at the time the company was founded.
Context and vision: In France he studied about various models of socio-economic development as socialism and capitalism. Mr. Murthy concluded that “society can reduce poverty through job creation.” He implied that a happy medium between the two ideological extremes was appropriate. Murthy’s role model was Mahatma Gandhi; he lives by his values of truth and simplicity.
Building the enterprise: Murthy handpicked the organization’s core team, a group of people uniformly like-minded regarding the vision and values he held. The individuals chosen to be part of the core team demonstrated “mutually exclusive but collectively exhaustive” skills, expertise, and experience. Individual team members’ strengths were complimentary rather than redundant; collectively, the team held the comprehensive skills and experiences required to establish a successful enterprise.
Jagriti Yatra 2011 