The Hindu Business Line : ‘Think beyond BPOs, embrace agriculture’

Mumbai, Aug. 3 Indian companies should stop over-focussing on strategy and start working on plans for future growth, according to Prof. Vijay Govindarajan, Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business and Founding Director of the William F. Achtmeyer Center for global leadership at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, US.

He was in town to interact with managers and consultants from Capgemini, Bank of Baroda, Tata Power, Aditya Birla group, and Birla Sun Life Insurance among others.

If India wishes to become a manufacturing leader by 2050, it must start work in 2007 itself, the professor said, and urged companies here to invest in people in terms of learning and development.

‘Think different’

He lamented that despite churning out world-class students year after year, the IIMs and IITs were under-class by world standards.

The professor cautioned that India’s recent burst of growth due to outsourcing cannot go on for long, stressing on the need to innovate and think out-of-the-box.

For growth to be equitable, the much-neglected agriculture needs to get primacy, he said, citing the example of ITC’s e-choupal initiative that helped transform traditional way of agricultural crop marketing.

Caution growth

He also cautioned against India blindly emulating the US model of retail where mom-and-pop shops were wiped out by the likes of Wal-Mart. Comparing India’s growth with that of China, the professor said China’s growth has come at a heavy price in terms of industrial pollution.

‘Foster innovation’

He also stressed that the traditional Indian hierarchical system needs to be changed and ideas of every employee exploited in order to foster innovation at every level of the management ladder.

Prof. Govindarajan is co-author of the Harvard Business School press book titled Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators and has advised companies like AT&T, IBM, Wal-Mart, Kodak, and Gap.