The SP Jain Institute of Management Research (SPJIMR) organised a conclave recently which focused on whether India could emerge as the innovation capital of the world. Vijay Govindarajan, the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School; R Gopalakrishnan, a former senior executive of the Tata group and SPJIMR’s Executive-in-Residence; Natarajan Chandrasekharan, chief executive officer (CEO) of Tata Consultancy Services and the chairman designate of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata group; Sanjiv Mehta, CEO of Hindustan Unilever Ltd, among others attended the conclave.
Professor Govindarajan delivered the keynote address in which he covered his time as the Chief Innovation Officer of GE, and how Indian businesses like Narayana Health (formerly known as Narayana Hrudayalaya) were taking innovation to developed markets. He spoke of adopting “next practices” rather than studying “best practices”.
The conclave also had a section on learning about innovation from areas beyond business such as sports. Joy Bhattacharjya — Project Director, local organising committee of the U-17 FIFA World Cup, who was previously a part of the Indian Premier League starting from 2008 and served as team director of the Kolkata Knight Riders franchise — spoke about innovation in sport.
The SPJIMR faculty also released a white paper that discussed innovation in Indian companies, which offered a strategic framework for “co-opetition”, a balance between cooperation and competition in leading innovation in businesses.