Has recession forced IT companies to do more innovation?

Recession has made a lot of people start thinking. Thinking is one of the first few things one does if you need to innovate. Does that mean more innovation will come? Unfortunately it doesn’t seem with a study done in some large, medium and small IT companies in Bangalore. Large would be companies with more than 10,000 employees, medium would mean between 3,000 and 10,000 and small would mean 1000 to 3000 employees.
This study was based on interviews with some of the employees in the various IT companies in Bangalore. It seems that a pattern seems to emerge from most of the conversation. 1. Times are bad, recession in the US has hit us real bad, 2. There isn’t going to be promotion and no hike in pay packet for this year, 3. Company top brass are racking their heads to figure out how to overcome the bad business situation.
It is clear that 1 and 2 are consequences of a certain input conditions. We probed into point 3 as we felt we would get some meaningful insights. What then comes out is a strong focus on cost cutting. Leave very little meat, but make sure you don’t hit the bone is the mantra. So what are the top brass racking their head on- innovate on cost cutting. Workshops are held among senior management with the agenda- 1. Get rid of the paraphernalia. 2. Why are there so many managers? 3. Get rid of experienced people, anyways the kind of work we are doing now we don’t need them. 4. Maintain Senior (people with greater than 8 years experience) to junior ratio (people with less than 3 years experience), this is one is the favorite. 5. Get rid of as many people as possible in the name of performance.
Conclusions- Did innovation happen? Not really. Even if some claims it has happened, it is purely from a cost cutting perspective. Companies are going to look like walking skeleton. I guess this is more less the case with most Indian IT companies.What we need is some positive spiraling innovations.