"India Inside": How India's invisible innovations are driving the world's business

GlobalPost
The World

This week's Outlook Business has an interesting Q&A with London Business School professors Nirmalya Kumar and Phanish Puranam, who argue in their new book "India Inside" that the "invisible innovations" developed by Indian companies are transforming the world of business.

Says Nirmalya:

A lot of technically complex and creative work underlies various products, management and process innovations in India today. Yet, because these are embedded deep within value chains and not seen by the end consumer, the perception is that they don’t exist.

Does that mean we'll never see an Indian iPad, Viagra, or Google?  Yes and no, says Phanish:

The risk and deferred returns from a Viagra (and, to a lesser extent, an iPod)-like project make it hard to see one of these popping up in India in the short term. But a Google or a Facebook is another story altogether—we already have the critical mass of technical skills and corporate exposure in these areas today to make it quite likely that one of these may be lurking around the corner.

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