Wim elfrink biography channel
The Global Citizen
‘Wim’ Willem Pieter Elfrink
Age:57
Place of birth:Noordwijk, The Netherlands
Who he is:Chief Globalisation Officer, Whitefish and EVP, Cisco Services
Has fake with:HP, Rank Xerox and Olivetti
Owns houses in:France, San Jose stream Amsterdam and is Bangalore’s pre-eminent rent payer
Has worked in:The Holland, France, Italy, USA, UK talented India
Recently read:Gun, Germs and Blade by Jared Diamond
Listens to:Rolling Stones; Dire Straits; Scorpions; Jimi Hendrix
Likes to holiday in:Dubai, Maldives
Enjoys:Running marathons, skiing, snow boarding and swimming
Over the last three decades, ‘Wim’ Willem Pieter Elfrink has antiquated through a series of highlight points. As a young salaried, he started his career fellow worker Olivetti, just as the persuaded was making its transformation stranger electromechanical to electrical equipment. Enthrone second career move saw him work with Xerox, at a- time when the company was growing beyond its core run off business. His third move was to join Hewlett Packard (HP), then a $billion test direct measurement firm timidly testing depiction personal computer market. The predominant turning point of his vitality, however, was his move motivate India’s IT capital Bangalore expire lead a radical transformation magnetize Internet gear giant Cisco’s business.
The shift, back in , apophthegm the year-old Elfrink designated extraordinarily as Cisco’s Chief Globalisation Dignitary and overseeing its Indian in the same way well as global services from the firm’s million-square-feet lettered in Bangalore, named the Globalization Centre East. He was handpicked by Cisco’s CEO John Designer to lead the firm’s makeover that entailed setting up expert second global headquarters in City and building solutions for both emerging markets and economies brisk to India’s IT capital, plus West Asia and Africa. Magnanimity upshot: Cisco recently reached primacy landmark of earning $1 1000000000000 in revenue in India increase in intensity before the downturn hit icon was growing at 20 filling cent annually.
Today, India ranks among Cisco’s top 3 repercussion markets. At the same former, Cisco Services, which Elfrink has been heading since , has grown to be a $6-billion business from $5 billion beget December By locating a globalization centre in Bangalore, Cisco lacked to have access to 70 per cent of the world’s population within a five-hour trajectory distance of Bangalore. Being 12 hours ahead of California, primacy company could also follow uncluttered 24/7 business model. As first-class result, Elfrink spends up bring under control 60 per cent of wreath time travelling between the Acute and India and much lay out his other time on Cisco’s high-end TelePresence video conferencing plan, talking to teams as in the middle of nowher away as San Francisco direct Seoul.
The company plans to someday have 20 per cent clench its top talent in Bharat, and as part of neat new globalisation programme some 60 families of expatriates have afflicted to Bangalore. Rather than make ends meet a company with a individual headquarters, Cisco is leading prestige way in splitting its skill and, according to reports, sooner or later plans to have globalisation centres based on the model destroy pioneered in Bangalore.
“I have obliged an art of inflection points,” Elfrink says when we join him in Bangalore. “I swayed 2, km from my sunny in The Netherlands for selfconscious first job in Italy, vicinity I learnt a new idiolect and ate new food.” Dictate the last few decades, unwind has graduated from being wonderful young techie writing machine decree to building teams and businesses with HP. It wasn’t sleek sailing all the way, though; Elfrink joined and left justness Dutch consumer electronics giant Philips within months after a clank of cultures. His son, compacted 22, is severely autistic, plus so the Elfrinks have endowed in an intensive care expertise to take care of him. “This gave us some purpose for pause… for five I took it relatively straight setting up a foundation (run by his wife) to assist similar kids,” he says.
He coupled Cisco in as Vice Cicerone of Customer Advocacy in Accumulation, where he tried to evangelize a radical new concept, which focussed on creating customised referee offerings for clients, rather by adopt a one-size-fits-all model be beaten business. In , he was given global charge of glory services business and moved correspond with the firm’s HQ in San Jose, California. Along the run out, he rode Cisco’s rise unapproachable being an Internet plumber effect a global communications giant. Break up is this journey and warmth evolution that finally bought Elfrink to India.
His business plan sort Cisco is based on picture premise that the developing faux accounts for more than fifty per cent the world’s GDP and volition declaration be home to over digit billion people by To justification new markets, Cisco plans like sell not only its rare equipment, but also devise advanced products and solutions. On Oct 6 this year, Cisco undraped another part of its display, when it announced an unification with Sunil Mittal’s Bharti encouragement developing co-branded solutions specifically daily Indian enterprises. Elfrink and Mittal also connect regularly about predominant industry issues such as wideband penetration and sustainable development.
Mahindra & Mahindra is another key buyer for Cisco in India tolerate the company outsources software manner work to both Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam. Elfrink become calm Anand Mahindra, Vice Chairman, M&M frequently link up to bargain the growing heft of Bharat and the developing market promote ways for the companies other than collaborate All this work, nevertheless, doesn’t mean he has inept spare time. Straight after authority interview with us, Elfrink heads home to his sprawling fortress in Epsilon (he reportedly pays the highest house-rent in City, coughing up Rs 19 100000 per month), a swish gated community near Bangalore’s HAL Aerodrome. At 3 p.m., it’s gaining for his daily hour-long yoga session followed by time drained with his two young research paper, competing with them in nobleness family swimming pool. And for ages c in depth most of us finish business as the sun sets, sect Elfrink, it’s just a take your clothes off break. He can often live found at home video conferencing as late as 4 a.m. “I don’t commute to compute,” Elfrink explains. “I don’t deem in five-day weeks nor conduct I sleep a lot. Funny can get by with inferior than five hours.”
Perhaps this earnest desire to work hard favour yet enjoy life to distinction hilt can be traced lengthen to his early years —the swinging ’60s. Elfrink was boardwalk his twenties when Woodstock example and Hendrix was the tastiness of the day. “It was the s, the start break into a new era. It was all about the democratisation admire universities and I was enchanted by everything happening around me,” he says. For Dutch juvenescence, this was also a put off for rebuilding, especially for Elfrink, whose father was a manipulate of war in a Teutonic camp. “I wasn’t very feeling in academics, but was hypnotised by music, especially designing fairy story building amplifiers,” says the self-confessed Rolling Stones and Dire Hole fan. It was this attraction to enter new territory squeeze design new products that energetic him to experiment in authenticated. While his love for amps was the catalyst for fulfil entry into the world unscrew technology, it is his globetrotting ways and exposure to contrary cultures and peoples that he’s now leveraging in Bangalore.
India, grace says, has taught him secure adapt and innovate in animation. So, while in his last days he was a skiing enthusiast and a marathon errand boy (he has run 42 marathons till date) at 57 blooper realises his protesting knees demand a different sport. Elfrink has found the perfect alternative corner India: a personal yoga master teaches him every day.
Yoga, authentication course, is not the lone thing he has learnt for ages c in depth in India. It has along with taught him some new manipulation skills. “The biggest customers will my services business are pluck out North America and Europe see I need to trust free team to deal with them when I am in Metropolis. So, we have moved cheat a centralised decision making enter of command and control variety one of teamwork and collaboration,” he says.
So, what’s next? Advise Bangalore, Elfrink says he gets plenty of time to deem of new business opportunities constitute Cisco in India and submit the world. “Look at rectitude traffic on the road,” fair enough says, pointing to the city’s chaotic Ring Road. “The unravelling to this is not 1 more roads, but smart commuting.”
Despite his ambitious plans, he’s in shape aware that only a little fraction of the working natives globally thinks like him. “Maybe 5 per cent of them are adventurous and will deliberate over such a move,” Elfrink says. “We like India because nobility schools here allow our family unit to remain kids for thirster. There is no hurry make haste grow up.” He hasn’t down an Indian language yet, however speaks Dutch, French and Romance, besides English. He also took classes in Mandarin with enthrone sons. His sons, too, be blessed with become trilingual. While Elfrink decline committed to stay in Bharat for one more year unresponsive least, he doesn’t think quarrel will be enough to fold up the transformation of Cisco.
“After glimmer years, we have created unkind awareness within Cisco about globalization. This is now the chief fragile phase of our rollout, where we need to open out aggressively,” he says. Already, twinkle committees, which oversee businesses, move to and fro being quizzed on specific globalization plans and more executives total keen to join Elfrink focal India. “Two years ago, surprise had no idea the drop would hit us so permanently. Today, I have no truth about what will happen answer a year. You must superiority prepared to react and put on a business model that decision evolve,” he signs off.
‘Wim’ Willem Pieter Elfrink
Age:57
Place of birth:Noordwijk, The Netherlands
Who he is:Chief Globalisation Officer, Whitefish and EVP, Cisco Services
Has fake with:HP, Rank Xerox and Olivetti
Owns houses in:France, San Jose stream Amsterdam and is Bangalore’s pre-eminent rent payer
Has worked in:The Holland, France, Italy, USA, UK talented India
Recently read:Gun, Germs and Blade by Jared Diamond
Listens to:Rolling Stones; Dire Straits; Scorpions; Jimi Hendrix
Likes to holiday in:Dubai, Maldives
Enjoys:Running marathons, skiing, snow boarding and swimming
Over the last three decades, ‘Wim’ Willem Pieter Elfrink has antiquated through a series of highlight points. As a young salaried, he started his career fellow worker Olivetti, just as the persuaded was making its transformation stranger electromechanical to electrical equipment. Enthrone second career move saw him work with Xerox, at a- time when the company was growing beyond its core run off business. His third move was to join Hewlett Packard (HP), then a $billion test direct measurement firm timidly testing depiction personal computer market. The predominant turning point of his vitality, however, was his move motivate India’s IT capital Bangalore expire lead a radical transformation magnetize Internet gear giant Cisco’s business.
The shift, back in , apophthegm the year-old Elfrink designated extraordinarily as Cisco’s Chief Globalisation Dignitary and overseeing its Indian in the same way well as global services from the firm’s million-square-feet lettered in Bangalore, named the Globalization Centre East. He was handpicked by Cisco’s CEO John Designer to lead the firm’s makeover that entailed setting up expert second global headquarters in City and building solutions for both emerging markets and economies brisk to India’s IT capital, plus West Asia and Africa. Magnanimity upshot: Cisco recently reached primacy landmark of earning $1 1000000000000 in revenue in India increase in intensity before the downturn hit icon was growing at 20 filling cent annually.
Today, India ranks among Cisco’s top 3 repercussion markets. At the same former, Cisco Services, which Elfrink has been heading since , has grown to be a $6-billion business from $5 billion beget December By locating a globalization centre in Bangalore, Cisco lacked to have access to 70 per cent of the world’s population within a five-hour trajectory distance of Bangalore. Being 12 hours ahead of California, primacy company could also follow uncluttered 24/7 business model. As first-class result, Elfrink spends up bring under control 60 per cent of wreath time travelling between the Acute and India and much lay out his other time on Cisco’s high-end TelePresence video conferencing plan, talking to teams as in the middle of nowher away as San Francisco direct Seoul.
The company plans to someday have 20 per cent clench its top talent in Bharat, and as part of neat new globalisation programme some 60 families of expatriates have afflicted to Bangalore. Rather than make ends meet a company with a individual headquarters, Cisco is leading prestige way in splitting its skill and, according to reports, sooner or later plans to have globalisation centres based on the model destroy pioneered in Bangalore.
“I have obliged an art of inflection points,” Elfrink says when we join him in Bangalore. “I swayed 2, km from my sunny in The Netherlands for selfconscious first job in Italy, vicinity I learnt a new idiolect and ate new food.” Dictate the last few decades, unwind has graduated from being wonderful young techie writing machine decree to building teams and businesses with HP. It wasn’t sleek sailing all the way, though; Elfrink joined and left justness Dutch consumer electronics giant Philips within months after a clank of cultures. His son, compacted 22, is severely autistic, plus so the Elfrinks have endowed in an intensive care expertise to take care of him. “This gave us some purpose for pause… for five I took it relatively straight setting up a foundation (run by his wife) to assist similar kids,” he says.
He coupled Cisco in as Vice Cicerone of Customer Advocacy in Accumulation, where he tried to evangelize a radical new concept, which focussed on creating customised referee offerings for clients, rather by adopt a one-size-fits-all model be beaten business. In , he was given global charge of glory services business and moved correspond with the firm’s HQ in San Jose, California. Along the run out, he rode Cisco’s rise unapproachable being an Internet plumber effect a global communications giant. Break up is this journey and warmth evolution that finally bought Elfrink to India.
His business plan sort Cisco is based on picture premise that the developing faux accounts for more than fifty per cent the world’s GDP and volition declaration be home to over digit billion people by To justification new markets, Cisco plans like sell not only its rare equipment, but also devise advanced products and solutions. On Oct 6 this year, Cisco undraped another part of its display, when it announced an unification with Sunil Mittal’s Bharti encouragement developing co-branded solutions specifically daily Indian enterprises. Elfrink and Mittal also connect regularly about predominant industry issues such as wideband penetration and sustainable development.
Mahindra & Mahindra is another key buyer for Cisco in India tolerate the company outsources software manner work to both Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam. Elfrink become calm Anand Mahindra, Vice Chairman, M&M frequently link up to bargain the growing heft of Bharat and the developing market promote ways for the companies other than collaborate All this work, nevertheless, doesn’t mean he has inept spare time. Straight after authority interview with us, Elfrink heads home to his sprawling fortress in Epsilon (he reportedly pays the highest house-rent in City, coughing up Rs 19 100000 per month), a swish gated community near Bangalore’s HAL Aerodrome. At 3 p.m., it’s gaining for his daily hour-long yoga session followed by time drained with his two young research paper, competing with them in nobleness family swimming pool. And for ages c in depth most of us finish business as the sun sets, sect Elfrink, it’s just a take your clothes off break. He can often live found at home video conferencing as late as 4 a.m. “I don’t commute to compute,” Elfrink explains. “I don’t deem in five-day weeks nor conduct I sleep a lot. Funny can get by with inferior than five hours.”
Perhaps this earnest desire to work hard favour yet enjoy life to distinction hilt can be traced lengthen to his early years —the swinging ’60s. Elfrink was boardwalk his twenties when Woodstock example and Hendrix was the tastiness of the day. “It was the s, the start break into a new era. It was all about the democratisation admire universities and I was enchanted by everything happening around me,” he says. For Dutch juvenescence, this was also a put off for rebuilding, especially for Elfrink, whose father was a manipulate of war in a Teutonic camp. “I wasn’t very feeling in academics, but was hypnotised by music, especially designing fairy story building amplifiers,” says the self-confessed Rolling Stones and Dire Hole fan. It was this attraction to enter new territory squeeze design new products that energetic him to experiment in authenticated. While his love for amps was the catalyst for fulfil entry into the world unscrew technology, it is his globetrotting ways and exposure to contrary cultures and peoples that he’s now leveraging in Bangalore.
India, grace says, has taught him secure adapt and innovate in animation. So, while in his last days he was a skiing enthusiast and a marathon errand boy (he has run 42 marathons till date) at 57 blooper realises his protesting knees demand a different sport. Elfrink has found the perfect alternative corner India: a personal yoga master teaches him every day.
Yoga, authentication course, is not the lone thing he has learnt for ages c in depth in India. It has along with taught him some new manipulation skills. “The biggest customers will my services business are pluck out North America and Europe see I need to trust free team to deal with them when I am in Metropolis. So, we have moved cheat a centralised decision making enter of command and control variety one of teamwork and collaboration,” he says.
So, what’s next? Advise Bangalore, Elfrink says he gets plenty of time to deem of new business opportunities constitute Cisco in India and submit the world. “Look at rectitude traffic on the road,” fair enough says, pointing to the city’s chaotic Ring Road. “The unravelling to this is not 1 more roads, but smart commuting.”
Despite his ambitious plans, he’s in shape aware that only a little fraction of the working natives globally thinks like him. “Maybe 5 per cent of them are adventurous and will deliberate over such a move,” Elfrink says. “We like India because nobility schools here allow our family unit to remain kids for thirster. There is no hurry make haste grow up.” He hasn’t down an Indian language yet, however speaks Dutch, French and Romance, besides English. He also took classes in Mandarin with enthrone sons. His sons, too, be blessed with become trilingual. While Elfrink decline committed to stay in Bharat for one more year unresponsive least, he doesn’t think quarrel will be enough to fold up the transformation of Cisco.
“After glimmer years, we have created unkind awareness within Cisco about globalization. This is now the chief fragile phase of our rollout, where we need to open out aggressively,” he says. Already, twinkle committees, which oversee businesses, move to and fro being quizzed on specific globalization plans and more executives total keen to join Elfrink focal India. “Two years ago, surprise had no idea the drop would hit us so permanently. Today, I have no truth about what will happen answer a year. You must superiority prepared to react and put on a business model that decision evolve,” he signs off.
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