Rohit Tripathi is Global Vice President and GM, heading Cloud Solutions and Go-to-Market for SAP Mobile Services, and brings with him over 18 years of experience in software and business operations. Previously, Rohit held various leadership positions at SAP in the area of technology and products. Prior to joining SAP, Rohit was with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he was involved in advising senior executives of Fortune 500 companies on business strategy and operations. Rohit holds an MBA with high honors from University of Chicago, M.S. in Engineering from Iowa State University and B.Tech. in engineering from IIT Kanpur, India. He has also been elected to various honor societies in the field of business and engineering.

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Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Rohit believes that one needs passions in few dimensions so there should be one in the professional context and in the personal context. For the former, he is passionate about bringing to life new capabilities which help businesses and individuals become successful in their roles and in their journeys. For his personal passions, he divides this into two elements: long distance running and red wine.

The pivots made in his career were not planned and executed deliberately. He started with Trinity Consultants, which gave him a foothold and understanding on how businesses work, and then moved on to i2 Technologies where he had a phenomenal work experience. After this, his desire to grow led him back to Chicago for his MBA which opened doors to The Boston Consulting Group, which was focused on strategic and operational consulting. This allowed him to grow and gain experience rapidly but his interest in the industrial and tech industry led him to SAP.

Consulting is looking at processes and capabilities to see how we can improve and enhance and Rohit’s desire was to look at tools on how this can come to pass. It was this desire which led him from Trinity to i2 – to get more focused on products.

As GM & Head of Products at SAP, his focus is all about enriching customer experience with their scalable interconnectivity. They leverage on their ability to reach globally over 99.03% of the world’s mobile consumers and subscribers in over 200+ countries for their team to work on value add industry and LOB offerings on top of this interconnectivity. The one challenge which they tackle more is the fact that a lot of businesses, in implementing solutions, often want the end-to-end capability.

Rohit’s team is currently working on the newest offering of SAP People Connect 365, an exciting one which you can learn more on once they release more information on their Twitter account

Rapid Fire Questions

• What is your definition of innovation?

Innovation is anything which improves the quality of life of an individual or an organization.

• Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why?

Ideas are good but execution wins any day. It is the most painful part of the journey as well however, after all that is said, all that matters is if you have a customer that comes on board and uses the idea. 40% idea and 60% execution.

• What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far?

That nobody wants to hear about how great the solution or the technology that you need to offer is. They need to understand how it helps them and they need to hear about how it will help them.

• What is your favorite business book?

The Goal by Eli Goldratt

Business Adventures by John Brooks

• What is your favorite digital resource?

Run Keeper

Slack

• What is your favorite app?

Flipboard