Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
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a
Special
report
India
52 Indian think
Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove chart and
celebrate the new generation of Indian thought
leaders.
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Indian
think
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An Indian school of
management?
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Two-way learning
India itself is also going through a
critical transformation. It is an
emergent nation. Increasing Indian
economic prosperity has posed new
questions for accepted Western
business best practices. The
abundance of fresh material from
India is challenging and reshaping
existing thinking. Business thinkers
with Indian experience and
sensibilities are readily placed to
make sense of this.
It is clear that the flow of
knowledge has changed. Indian
business people traditionally learned
from American business schools. The
flow of knowledge is now two-way.
The assumption in the past was that
other emerging markets could learn
from India. Now, it is recognised that
Western companies and executives
can also learn from India.
India is an extremely interesting
laboratory right now, says Gita
Paramal. Customers do not know
how to be customers, and hence
react in completely unexpected
ways. The heavy use of SMS (short
messaging services) by mobile users
is one illustration. Putting
automobile tires on typical Indian
carts is a rural example. Managers in
India calling
Some US companies appear to have
recognised the shifting intellectual
tide. A number now regularly second
market in Brazil.
Such imaginative business
practice is where the real lessons
from India appear to lie. Indian
thinking challenges existing business
practice and received wisdom.
Many American companies say they
have globalised but they are really
international rather than global. They
are beginning to realise that the
centre of gravity cannot simply be
the United States. They have
traditionally developed products for
the US market and then try to export
them to other markets. That is
increasingly obsolete. To conquer
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Profile:
Arun
Sinha
A generation of Indian-born executives
are making inroads into corporate America.
Arun Sinha, chief marketing officer of
Pitney Bowes, talks to Georgina Peters about
how his Indian upbringing informs his
thoroughly modern marketing.
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Indian
entrepreneurs
with
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For all of its undeniable appeal, India is anything but a sure bet.
privately held food distribution and
logistics services company. The
company was established in 1966
and is headquartered near Mumbai.
CEO Raju Shet, who took command
at age 17 after the death of his
father, the companys founder, grew
Radhakrishna from a start-up that
provisioned ships into Indias largest
food conglomerate with interests in
wholesaling, distribution,
supermarkets, catering, and, as the
operator of a chain of McDonalds
restaurants, fast-food franchising.
With its investment of $50 million
for a 25 per cent stake in
Radhakrishna in mid 2003, Warburg
Pincus teamed up with Shet, now
just 40 years old, for what the
Indian media dubbed the business
opportunity of the new millennium.
Providing technical and financial
advice as minority shareholders,
Warburg Pincus will work with Shet
to implement a farm-to-plate
reorganisation of the food supply
chain. Their aim is to overcome the
fragmentation and public health
barriers that have stood in the way
of Indias development of a modern
food harvesting, processing, and
Hugh MacArthur (hugh.macarthur@bain.com), a Boston-based partner with Bain & Company, directs the firms
North American Private Equity Practice.
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Ashish Singh (ashish.singh@bain.com) is a Bain partner and head of the firms New Delhi office. Research support
was provided by Shailendra Singh (shailendra.singh@bain.com), a consultant in Bains New York office.
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Instep
Infosys
with
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The process
Within Infosys, projects that are
suitable for the interns are collated
from different business units. They
are screened for their relevance and
suitability. Interns work on a wide
range of projects that are expected to
have an impact on the companys
core processes. During the selection
of interns their academic
achievements and relevant
experience are matched with the
projects available.
There are project mentors to guide
interns in their project work. The
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Innovation step-by-step
InStep is the only systemised global
internship programme in India. One
of the toughest challenges is to
convey to aspiring students that
there is a global internship
programme in an Indian organisation
that they may find interesting.
Information sessions are given in top
academic institutes across the world
to establish direct contact with the
students. The presentations focus on
providing information regarding the
organisation and its uniqueness in
terms of brand and processes.
The career aspirations of foreign
students also have to be considered.
American interns tend to have much
more work experience and have
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Sandeep K. Krishnan (sandeepk@iimahd.ernet.in) is a doctoral student in the personnel and industrial relations
area at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. His primary area of research is related to human
resources in the Indian IT industry. He has published widely in the field of human resource management.
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passage
from
India
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oimbatore Krishnao CK
Prahalad was born in the
town of Coimbatore in Tamil
Nadu. He studied physics at the
University of Madras (now Chennai),
followed by work as a manager in a
branch of the Union Carbide battery
company. He continued his
education in the United States,
earning a PhD from Harvard. He
taught both in India and America,
eventually joining the faculty of the
University of Michigans Business
School, where he holds the Harvey C.
Fruehauf Chair of Business
Administration.
At Ann Arbor, Prahalad met Gary
Hamel, then a young international
business student. Their collaboration
ultimately resulted in the bestselling,
Competing for the Future (1994).
The book provided a launch pad for
the second phase of his intellectual
career. In his recent book (written
with Venkat Ramaswamy), The
Future of Competition (2004),
Prahalad argues that companies have
not made enough use of the
opportunities provided by
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The real source of market promise is not the wealthy few in the
developing world, or even the emerging middle-income
consumers. It is the billions of aspiring poor who are joining the
market economy for the first time.
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Des Dearlove (des.dearlove@suntopmedia.com) is co-founder of the training and consulting company, Suntop Media.
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