It is a privilege to be called upon to inaugurate the School of Management building. This school is unique in India for its focus on management set in a technology environment. Prof Sukhatme and Prof Korgaonkar have shown exemplary vision and leadership in creating this institution and crafting its future. I compliment them for their foresight and commitment.

To my mind, this School of Management is founded on a very strong value proposition. Accelerated pace of technology change has created new businesses. It has wiped out others. It has placed a pervasive demand for continuous innovation. New product, process and distribution technologies provide powerful levers for creating value. Businesses of the future are all technology-driven. Technology-based solutions promise to mitigate the productivity fatigue. Technology is also seen as an agent ofsocial change. In such a milieu, technology management becomes valuable both to businesses and to society. To my mind, technology will underline competitive advantage in three ways:

1. As an incubator of new businesses

2. As an alleviator of productivity fatigue

3. As an agent of social change

Let me elucidate on each of these aspects. First, on technology management as an incubator of new businesses.

If you look at every business of the future you will see that they are technology driven - computer networks, communications, geomatics, life sciences, aerospace, advanced materials, tissue engineering, robotics and automation. Today, these businesses account for only 10 per cent of global GDP of about $30 trillion. However, by the year 2010, they will account for 21 per cent of the enhanced global GDP of $37 trillion. More importantly, these businesses will contribute $4.4 trillion or two thirds of incremental growth in economic output in the next 10 years.

All these businesses have muchshorter technological life cycles as compared to conventional businesses. In the past, technology-led companies could afford to get along for a decade without any fundamental changes in strategy. Today strategic cycles are being talked about in `web years' which is about three months.

Businesses of the future are also intensively driven by research and innovation opportunities to create value for end-use sectors. For example, technology in the banking sector has reduced transaction costs from $2.5 per transaction for a teller to 40 cents for an ATM to 10 cents for Internet banking. Technology-led businesses also create new business domains at the crossroads of existing business sectors. The business of nutraceuticals sees its domain at the intersection of biotechnology with pharmaceuticals. Likewise geonomics lies at the intersect of biotechnology and information technology. Above all, technology-led businesses involve a profile of young and creative people working in an entrepreneurial mode. The ethos isone of partnership.

These characteristics demand managers who can compete in a high-tech world. Technological management thus becomes an imperative for the future lies not just in technology but in the ability to make businesses out of them and to manage them for competitive advantage.

Second, on technology management as an alleviator of the productivity fatigue. In most of the traditional economic activities, limits on performance have been reached. In the $1.8 trillion automobile industry - the world's largest - conventional technologies in fuel injection, multi-valve engines and engineering plastics have brought about a convergence of performance characteristics. There is very little differentiation and the industry is getting commoditised. It is becoming extremely difficult to break the 18 km to a litre barrier in fuel efficiency. The PNGV partnership, involving the Big Three automakers and US government laboratories, has spent over $2 billion in the last five years. Their efforts with far-outtechnologies, such as flywheels and ultracapacitors, to achieve 35 km to a litre of fuel are still far away from success. In the $1.5-trillion chemical industry - world's second largest - there is not much play for technology to bring about major conversion and yield enhancements. In agrochemicals, there is a fatigue in discovering new pesticides to constantly overcome pest resistance. In pharmaceuticals, the traditional method of using drugs to operate directly on the body's metabolism or by acting on pathogens and parasites are not yielding major breakthroughs. In the refining industry, the bottom-of-the-barrel oriented technologies are all in a state of maturity.

In agriculture, the current set of technologies, based on high-yielding varieties and soil management, is under fatigue. To illustrate, the compound annual growth rate of the composite agriculture yield index in India has been stagnating at 1.5 per cent during this decade as compared to 2.5 per cent during the eighties and a peak of 3 per centin 1980.

Fortunately, technology is offering solutions to the productivity paralysis. Agro-biotechnology promises to make crops auto resistant to pests, raise crop yields and engineer crop traits like never before. Drug-biotechnology presents a new method for working of drugs at the molecular level in the human body in controlling, curing and preventing diseases in a cost-effective manner. Hybrid vehicle technologies promise to raise fuel efficiency from 18 km to a litre to 25 km a litre. Precision farming is seen as the key to higher farm yields beyond what is promised by hybrid seeds and biotechnology. It involves hydrology, computer sciences and global positioning systems for providing water, nutrients and pesticides based on each individual plant's soil quality, tissue analysis and microclimatic condition. Enzyme-catalysed reactions promise to make chemical products in an energy efficient manner. New methods in energy resources production, such as sub-sea platforms and deep water drilling, are enlargingthe reserves of oil and gas.

These answers to the productivity fatigue place technology at the frontier of competitive advantage and value creation in business. Technology management in this context becomes important in the quick translation of value creation potential to shareholder benefits. Third, on technology management as an agent of social change.

To my mind technology has tremendous potential to bring about social change. Information technology is a powerful tool for delivery of knowledge and information at the doorsteps of citizens. This has far reaching ramifications for education, training, agriculture, health services and government administration. It can help farmers access research and technology at his doorsteps. It can deliver knowledge and education at the doorsteps of the poor in a highly cost effective manner. It can bring government to the people. The convergence of space technology, remote sensing, meteorology and biosciences has great significance for agricultural productivity andenvironment degradation. This convergence helps in crop prospecting, identification of water resources, identification of fishing zones, weather forecasting and prevention of biodegradation. They can help uplift rural economies. At the organisation level, virtual integration through the use of information technology along with strategic alliances for far-out riskier technologies will re-define corporate organisation and relationships. Robotics will impact the composition of labour force. Robots in the auto industry already form about 20 per cent of the total labour force in Japan and about 6 to 8 per cent in USA, Germany, Sweden and Italy. With increasing levels of automation, consequent lower employment elasticities and lower contribution of human labour to the final product, the pattern of employment and trade union activity is bound to change. Historically, organisations were designed to institutionalise stability. In the future, the goal of organisation design will be to institutionalise change.

Withstock markets increasingly holding a higher level of technology stocks, the financial sector will be dependent to a large extent on the constant flow of innovations from technology companies and on using technology management skills in venture capital funding.

Thus, technology management becomes an important discipline in integrating technology and business for competitive advantage. The triad of technology management will be in technology-driven new businesses, technology leveraged conventional businesses and technology-led social changes. Protection of intellectual property rights, concerns on the negative fall outs of technology and the use of technical knowledge to gain economic advantage will set the environment for technology management practitioners. Naturally, many leading universities in the world have embraced technology management education. There are many variants, but the theme is the same - from the MIT's `specialist track combining e-commerce and marketing' to Carneige Mellon's one-yearmasters in `science in commerce'. To my mind, technology management skills founded in a technology institution will have great value. It creates the right setting because the world of high-tech lives is a multi-disciplinary technical environment with obscure boundaries between disciplines. All these factors give me every reason to believe that the School of Management is founded in an appropriate setting - combining management education in a world class technology institution - and built for managing our future. It's timing is very appropriate. I am sure that the school will earn fame as an engine of economic development. I am confident that the school and its products will have a future full of success and glory.

The author is vice-chairman and managing director Reliance Industries Limited