Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Sunday, Dec 21, 2008
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Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Sunday, Dec 21, 2008 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version | Audio | Blogs |
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Industry & Economy
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Events Constrained innovation is India’s strength: Prahalad 
(from left Mr Ravi Kant, Managing Director, Tata Motors; Prof C.K. Prahalad, University of Michigan; Mr B. Muthuraman, MD, Tata Steel; and Mr S. Ramadorai, CEO and MD, Tata Consultancy Services, at Pan IIT 2008, the global conference for IIT alumni, in Chennai on Saturday — Our Bureau Chennai, Dec. 20 Constraints in India can be a source of dramatic global innovation, as instances such as the Tata Nano and a host of other low cost products show, Dr C.K. Prahalad, noted management guru and Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy, said on Saturday. Speaking at Pan IIT 2008, a meeting of IIT alumni, Dr Prahalad, who recently co-authored a book called “The new age of innovtion”, said India could be a laboratory for global innovation. He said the current economic crisis is “an extraordinarily good time” for India to learn to adjust to the current prices. Dr Prahalad was moderating a discussion on innovation, in which the panelists were three heads of three companies of the Tata group – Mr B. Muthuraman, Managing Director, Tata Steel, Mr Ravi Kant, Managing Director, Tata Motors and Mr S. Ramadorai, CEO and MD, Tata Consultancy. He said culturally, India was best suited to adapt to diversity as the country had a lot of diversity in itself. Mr Muthuraman said a lot of innovation happened in his company though “it is difficult to demonstrate innovation in steel.” These innovations, he said, help cut its customers’ inventories by as much as half and thereby add value. He spoke of the ‘manthan’ (or, churning) programme in Tata Steel, where all employees give in their suggestions for improvement. “Innovation has nothing to do with education,” Mr Muthuraman said, noting that some semi-educated workers have brought about some “amazing” innovations. Mr Ravi Kant said “urbanization of mind” that was happening in India—as technology causes rural folk to desire for an urban kind of life—was a huge opportunity for India (in terms of new markets). He spoke of the turnaround of Tata Daewoo in Korea, a company that Tata Motors took over four years ago, and said the Jaguar-Land Rover acquisition would also similarly turn profitable. Mr Ravi Kant also spoke of India’s disadvantages—lack of discipline, tolerance of bad quality, lack of concern for fellow human beings and lack of killer instinct. Mr Ramadorai spoke about how a team of 48 people delivered a supercomputer in 11 months that could operate at speeds of 132.8 teraflops, at a time when the maximum speed in India was about 15 teraflops. (The supercomputer, Eka, Asia’s fastest computer, has been built by Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons. Alumni to descend in droves for Pan-IIT event More Stories on : Events | Economy
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