A master professor

PASSING THROUGH: Vijay Govindarajan

Govindarajan is the Earl C Daum 1924 professor of international business at The Amos Tuck School, Dartmouth College, in the US.

The Business Week magazine had described him as one of the most outstanding faculty members in its primer on the best business schools.

The dapper professor was ranked by the Management International Review among the top 20 North American researchers on strategy and organisation (his interests are strategic cost management, global strategy and organisation and strategy implementation).

One of his papers is also recognised among the 10 most-cited articles in the 40-year history of the Academy of Management Journal.

The voluble Govindarajan says he's bullish on India. "Today, if I have to choose between investing in India and China, I will choose the former," he says but is quick to acknowledge that this may not be the case the world over.

"The advantage that India has over China is its stable political environment. China's political transition will still take many years," he says. India needs to take advantage of this fact to become a super power, he contends.

Govindarajan, who was in Hyderabad some time ago to handle The Amos Tuck School's global leadership 2020 programme, charts out the roadmap for India to become a global super power.

"India is a huge market for all kinds of products. So, a lot of corporates can do good business here," Govindarajan says. "This apart, we have the strength of talented human capital. Even if we say that about 20 per cent of India's population is smart, that will mean about 20 million smart people," he adds.

"Students over here are way ahead of their counterparts in other countries in the fields of science and technology," Govindarajan says. "But then, though we focus on science and technology, the education pattern here is such that we lay emphasis on memorising rather than on understanding and innovating," he adds.

"We need to have a broad education pattern that enables students to understand other subjects like history and anthropology, as critical thinking can be developed only through a balance between technology and humanities and arts," he continues.

"Today we have quite a number of B-schools and technology institutions in India. But we need to bring more people from industry to teach students. We lag behind in faculty," he says. Students also need to ensure that they get practical experience of at least two years before they join the world of business, Govindarajan adds.

Govindarajan obtained a graduate degree in commerce and did a chartered accountancy course in India, followed by an MBA and a doctorate from the Harvard Business School. Before joining The Tuck School, he worked with the Ohio State University and the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad).

He has also served as a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School and the International University of Japan.

Often the keynote speaker at leadership development programmes and CEO forums, he also works with CEOs and top management teams in Fortune 500 companies to discuss business strategy.

When not discussing strategy, he walks, plays tennis and travels.

"Our business communities need to develop a customer-centered mindset like their counterparts in the West," he says. "In India, people still believe that the customer is waiting to buy their products and therefore do not try to develop products or services keeping him or her in mind," he adds.

This is not the case in developed countries, where the customer is considered to be the king, he believes.

"Creating infrastructure, I guess, is easier to accomplish than changing the mindset in these cases," he says. But this is the need of the hour, he concludes.