Fostering a Culture of Innovation: Lessons from Leading GCCs

Make innovation a habit. 

Create time (e.g., innovation sprints or special hours) to make ideation a consistent beat and not a singular occurrence.

Democratise ideation. 

Conduct open challenges and suggestion platforms; the most promising ideas usually have their origin at unexpected levels.

Develop and train middle-level managers as drivers. 

Middle-level executives bring strategy and turn it into daily behaviour; they must invest in their coaching and thawing team capacity.

Measure the right things. 

Instead of focussing on utilisation and ticket-closure KPIs, use prototype velocity, pilot conversion rate, and customer impact.

Scale what works fast. 

Managed pilots who have definite stop/go criteria save capital and fast-track winners.

• Risk aversion: Counter with low-cost pilots and fixed failure budgets.
• Experimentation-valuing outcome metrics Add outcome metrics that value experimentation.
• Silos: Develop cross-domain pods and rotation programmes.
• Leadership Inertia: Win quick wins to build credibility by being visibly sponsored at the top.

Employment opportunities: AI, data science, and product and cloud engineering positions are high-value skilled positions created by modern GCCs. The recent state GCC policies focus on multiplying the number of jobs and making big investments.

Investment and exports: GCCs attract corporate capex and services exports via IP, platforms, and digital products.

Real estate and local GDP: Grade-A office space and campus investments are the local demand drivers; GCC leasing is becoming a significant growth driver in such cities as Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

Enterprise Resilience: The internalisation capabilities, AI, cybersecurity, and cloud help a company to increase the time to market and decrease its reliance on the outside world.

Flowchart: 

This flywheel transforms little bets into magnified results where leadership invests resources and eliminates structural friction.

In 2025 a number of Indian states, most recently Maharashtra, have initiated GCC-oriented policies, setting targets of hundreds of new centers and job creation promises on a larger scale. The policies are a boon to the decentralisation to Tier-2/Tier-3 cities and an indicator of an age during which the government plays an active role in GCC geography and ability decisions. Talent pipelines and infrastructure co-design with local governments should be seen as an opportunity by leaders to build momentum in policy. 

The construction of a culture of innovation in a GCC is not a checklist; it is a culture of operating in the long run. Begin small: safeguard time to experiment, give cross-functional pods authority, educate managers to be catalysts, and quantify meaningful results. The increasing number of centers (1,900+), growing revenues, and ambitious state policies, along with the GCCs that inculcate innovation into their everyday practice, will seal the upcoming decade of value generation.

Start with culture before moving on to technology when your GCC wants to move away from reliable delivery and towards repeatable innovation. Faster products, better client relationships, increased talent retention, and measurable economic value are the results of that series of events rather than just theoretical gains.