1、GCCs:Dinosaurs or Unicorns?May 2023By Rajiv Gupta and Snehil Gambhir1 GCCS:DINOSAURS OR UNICORNS?Extinct vs fi ctitious.Scary vs cute.Jurassic Park vs The Last Unicorn.Black,dark,and ominous vs white,furry,and cuddly.Or in the“analogous corporate world”large,slow,dying,and in the sell portfolio of i

2、nvestors vs small,agile,growing,and in the buy portfolio of PE/VCs.In this continuum,if we think of Global Capability Centers(GCCs)as a sector,and if each GCC were a standalone company,where would they lie?(No points for the consultants favorite response,i.e.,“Somewhere in between”).Are they akin to

3、 too-large-to-fail but slow-moving dinosaurs?Or are they closer to the rapidly innovating and adopting,driving great valuation unicorns?When it comes to GCCs,be it their leaders in India or their corporate sponsors at HQ,they will invariably tout the success of the initiative and the collateral impa

4、ct it has had on the parent organization,on its clients and customers,its employees,and society at large.But other stakeholders may argue otherwise and there are some quintessential elephants in the room neither extinct nor fi ctitious.Some such controversial and contrarian themes that emerge(a few

5、louder than others)regularly are:GCCs are ultimately about driving costs down;everything else(capability,resilience,talent)is secondary and at best,nice to have.GCCs talk about talent augmentation and up-skilling,but the rhetoric in the industry is actually all about FTEs and scale;it is not really

6、a talent magnet.GCCs,despite owning a large part of an organizations operations and technology,have done little to drive innovation.One can argue that these themes are overly simplistic,almost bordering on the nave;or contrarily,that they are the reality which many leaders,due to their own self-inve