At the center of it all is innovation – luckily for Dallas, CEO and Co-founder of ENO8, Rishi Khanna said the city has a strong innovation culture.
In early February, Jeff Francis, president and co-founder of the Plano-based digital product studio, told the Dallas Business Journal that if business leaders were not making innovation a priority, they're putting their business at risk. With the need for digital tools growing amid the pandemic, Khanna said that ENO8 has had an influx of client conversations discussing how to incorporate these tools into one's business so that instead of being disrupted, one can be the disruptor.
In conjunction with this week's Software Developer list, the Journal spoke with Khanna about the tech scene in Dallas and the increasing importance of digital tools:
What have been the impacts of COVID-19 on Dallas' progression into a major tech hub?
When we last spoke, I said that Dallas is finally getting the reputation of being a tech hub – it's getting the interest that it deserves, and it's been a long time coming. People didn't take Dallas very seriously for the longest time. I feel that you've seen the momentum during the pandemic; a number of companies have announced moves and have moved during the pandemic. The future prospects of hiring are tremendously increasing in Dallas, making the Dallas tech market and talent market very competitive at this point.
With the rise of work from home and the resulting growing use of technology in the office environment, what will be the long-term impacts?
A lot of companies that were closed-minded to the fact that talent can be leveraged anywhere and doesn't really need to come to the office have now opened their eyes to the great talent available anywhere in the globe – mainly Latin America, East Asia, India or Eastern Europe. I think the companies are now becoming more prone to acquiring talent and, and they want to get into a low cost of running the operations, so Dallas becomes a good next step.
Plus, on top of that, (with) technology improvements where you can zoom anywhere … there's a cultural change happening across the company. You can see that companies are now getting comfortable with the fact that their talent will not necessarily come to the office. Before, working from home was a luxury or was a one-off thing. Now working from home is the new norm and coming to the office is an optional thing. Those are kinds of changes that we're seeing, and that's leading to customers or companies rethinking about how they need to set up their business, the business infrastructure (and) the talent pool to be able to tap into those markets.
What is your advice to companies right now to ensure a sustainable future?
I think companies need to further open their mind to the fact that the trend is here to stay, and it's not something that they (can) go back to the old thinking after coming out of the pandemic. ... That's one thing, and because it's going to be here to stay, everyone needs to be open to the fact that they need to think about their business and how the business needs to be operated. They also need to figure out how to rethink the job profiles … and how they're going to manage and incentivize people to work in this new environment. That's going to change the fabric of how we have been operating historically.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
