Innovate for the future or optimize the present? Reach new markets or build existing ones?
Don’t choose. Don’t settle. Do both.
In Doing Both: Capturing Today’s Profit and Driving Tomorrow’s Growth, Cisco Senior Vice President Inder Sidhu shows you how. Over the past seven years, Cisco’s Doing Both strategy has doubled revenue, tripled profits, and quadrupled earnings per share. This insider guide reveals how Cisco did it—and how you can, too.
Doing Both means approaching every decision as an opportunity to seize, not a sacrifice to endure. It means avoiding false choices, reduced expectations, and weak compromises. It means finding ways to make each option benefit and mutually reinforce the other.
Sidhu explains why “doing both” is today’s best growth strategy. Drawing on Cisco’s hard-won insights and the experiences of companies like Procter & Gamble, Whirlpool, and Harley-Davidson, he presents a complete blueprint for “doing both” in your company, through:
· Sustaining and Disruptive Innovation
· Existing and New Business Models
· Optimization and Reinvention
· Satisfied Customers and Gratified Partners
· Established and Emerging Countries
· Doing Things Right and Doing What Matters
· Superstar Performers and Winning Teams
Inder Sidhu is Senior Vice President of Strategy and Planning for Worldwide Operations at Cisco, the $40 billion worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. He is also a member of the company’s Operating Committee.
From 2006-2010, Inder co-led Cisco's Emerging Countries Council, which drives business success in fast-growing geographies like China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, and the Middle East. From 2006-2009, he co-led the Enterprise Business Council, which is responsible for Cisco’s corporate business, representing about half of the company’s total revenue.
In 2010, Sidhu published Doing Both (FT Press). In this New York Times bestseller, he identifies common business dichotomies and explores how successful companies avoid difficult tradeoffs and instead achieve bigger outcomes by “doing both.” Using this framework, he offers a unique view of Cisco’s consistent record of innovation and high performance.
Since joining Cisco in 1995, Sidhu has held executive leadership positions in the Sales, Services, and Business Development groups. He has served as the Vice President and General Manager for Worldwide Professional Services, Vice President and General Manager for Advanced Engineering Services, and Vice President for Strategy and Business Development, Customer Advocacy.
Before joining Cisco, Sidhu was with McKinsey & Company, an international management consulting company. He has also worked at Intel and Novell.
Sidhu is a frequent guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, Stanford University, and the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Goodwill of Silicon Valley.
Sidhu holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and a master’s degree in business administration from the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. He also is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
