I think, for one, they are a lot larger. The thing the American companies face is deflation in their home business model and pricing. Because the Indians have changed the baseline pricing, the bigger companies have to do that.

Look at IBM, in its services business, I believe, they paddle furiously to stay in place. They may be lining up more contracts, maybe doing more services for people and producing more but because of price deflation their revenues cannot grow. Now if they were to do all these things like changing their business models and all that they would be shrinking.

Over time I would expect the Western companies to maybe grow a little bit better and the Indian companies see their growth rate come down a little bit.

There are lots of challenges in rapid growth. Infosys added 10,000 people last quarter and I would not be surprised if they have some hiccups at some point.

You speak about Premji in the book as a thought leader like Bill Gates. What is the similarity you find between the two men?

I would say the similarities are in the way they are seen by people in their own countries. Bill Gates is, of course, the richest person in the world. Premji, on the other hand, is the second richest person in India and his company does not stand out from the rest quite the way Microsoft does. So, the similarities are not exact, but more in terms of their stature relatively.

Premji has quite a bit of stature.

Also one of the interesting things about Microsoft is that it is a business model innovator. I think Wipro, TCS, Infosys are also business model innovators as well.

Image: Azim Premji announces his company's results in Bangalore.

Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images