Like any major technology company, Cisco Systems Canada is doing its best to track and predict market transformations.

Nitin Kawale, president of Cisco Systems Canada, says he spends half his time in any given month with partners, customers, government leaders and press to ensure he knows what's going on in the industry and what customers want.

"Catching market transformation is very important, no matter what industry you're in," says Kawale. Transitions in your market are your best opportunity for big wins–or big losses–he explains.

Kawale says the company recently came to the "scary" realization that the future is about getting the right folks hired—and that's the next generation. "We looked around our management table and realized that the expertise and the understanding of the next generation [needed] to recruit them [wasn't there,]" admits Kawale. "We weren't totally equipped, but have been working on it," he adds.

Kawale says that smaller businesses, especially startups, are better equipped to handle some of the significant market transformations occurring right now. "There are some very significant transformations occurring right now in terms of cloud computing, software-as-service, new consumption models—our industry is fundamentally changing the way it consumes technology," says Kawale. Organizations of all kinds need to embrace these changes. "When you're a larger company, that's much more daunting as opposed to a new startup accelerating around that," says Kawale.

Cisco Systems Canada plans to engage 5,000 new employees over the next ten years on Ontario, the bulk of them on the R&D side. Kawale says it's easy to find high-calibre talent in Ontario. Cisco's challenge is organizational: it must embracing the types of consumption models these new hires engaged. "The next generation of workers have grown up differently and you have to be able to let them work the way the live: that means working from anywhere, any time on any device," says Kawale.