Reverse Innovation: Create Far From Home, Win Everywhere

Just finished reading the book "Reverse Innovation".
Congratulations to Professors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble for this scholarly work.

Reading is my passion and this book ranks among the best books that I have read.
In the years to come, this is going to be a veritable bible for students and practitioners alike.

In addition to understanding the new concept of Reverse Innovation, my learnings include the following:

1) Best practices for new product development: The Chapters on Harman and John Deere explained clearly approaches to new product development, that could be used in any context, not necessarily in reverse innovation. (In a lighter vein, the Chapter on John Deere appeared like a thriller to me and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it)

2) Best practices for new business group incubation: Chapter 4 on LGTs gives guidelines how companies can incubate new business groups to fuel organic growth. I found a lot of synergy between these concepts and the ones presented in Jack Welch's book titled "Winning" (Chapter titled Organic Growth in Welch's book).

3) The flip side of the "Dominant Logic": In my own experience, I have seen organizations falling victim to the dominant logic. If a company is a leader in a certain space, it tries to develop new generation products better than its own previous generation products, oblivious of the fact that a new player would have changed the benchmarks.

In all,a must-buy book for Engineers and Managers across domains. Looking for more such works from Prof VG and team

I happened to read an interesting article in the Times of India by Vijay Govindarajan and Sundaram giving suggestions to Government of India on taking seriously the huge projects of joining Ganga-Kaveri rivers and the other one on Thorium based reactor technology for power generation. I liked the constructive spirit of the article attempting to suggest solutions, well needed at the present gloomy situation in India. I emailed to the authors congratulating them on article. Promptly I received a reply from Vjay Govindaranjan suggesting me to read his book - Reverse Innovation : Create far from home Win Everywhere . I immediately ordered that book and started reading it as soon as it arrived few days later. What I noticed immediately was the same constructive spirit mentioned above – not only bringing to attention the problems of the industries but suggesting humane but logical solutions to the emerging countries being fair to all parties - rich and poor. The book was well written and understandable even to me, with a physics background !
The book appeared to be a natural, but necessary , extension of of the idea of bottom of the pyramid population concept introduced by Prof.C.K.Prahlad. Practical Implications of this extension are demonstrated by citing examples of industries, like GE, Wal-Mart, Nokia and others which have adapted the ideas proposed by VG as he is known in the business circles. The thread of reasoning behind the proposals can be summarized as follows.
Necessity is the mother of innovation. This is demonstrated by citing the example of the GE which developed portable machines for Electrocardiograms. This development was motivated by the unreliable power supply leading to power cuts. The need for the use of these machines in remote , inaccessible rural areas was urgent necessity. GE recognized this and developed the technology and transported it to rich developed countries. The beauty of this book is that every assertion that is made is demonstrated by example.
Strategy for choosing a right approach to develop a product should take care of the conditions financial, social conditions in developing world. For example performance of a product is expected to e 100% satisfactory in a rich country and they would be willing to pay higher price 100%. In a developing country with inability to pay higher price people would be satisfied with 50% performance at a price of 15% . Example cited is that of Nokia cell phones by concentrating on one model and making it useful for Indian conditions like adding torch light and Hindi language messaging. The latter is only a software development - a low cost but valuable addition.
Rich countries should not make the mistake of taking for granted the emerging countries because they are poor - they are large number of buyers for smaller amount of money but the TOTAL finance could exceed that of the rich countries. Mind set is to be changed.
The book gives in detail the examples of industries which have used these techniques for their benefit.
This book is timely and valuable for India which is debating Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in various areas including retail. This book makes the important point that investment by the rich countries in India is beneficial for BOTH parties the rich who invest and India. In particular the case of Wal-Mart is often mentioned by the politicians fearing that kirana shops will disappear. While, as the book points out, the experience of Wal-Mart in central and south America shows that it is forced to go in for small shops and this concept is pushed back in to USA !. One could even think of the possibility of kirana shops taking up franchise of Wal-Mart at concessional rates.

Creativity,Innovation and Reverse Innovation are the three sides a triangle of business activation. Indra K.Nooyi's foreword its motivates the business entrepreneurs and the giants the way they have to adopt for survival and sustainability. Par I and Part II are the tow sides of Business coin to care in this post-modern world.The twelve chapters are the 12 commandments to the people who want to know business and prolong with positive trends.
An valuable and inspiring asset to this era. Hearty Thanks to Flipkart for taking initiative and pain to serve the book afresh.The M.B.A. students should read and and understand the crux of B-Schooling and its impact to reach the goal and the Industrialists must learn the 12 chapters to reach the pinnacle of success. The contents are not story or history, but facts and truth with practical case study and empirical learning. A gem in the treasure of Records to be preserves for reference and guidance.

THIS BOOK IS VERY GOOD AND GIVE VALUABLE INFORMATION ABOUT EMERGING MARKETS OF DEVELOPING NATION & TELL US HOW CAN WE GROW OUR BUSINESS & ORGANISATION IN DEVELOPING NATION WITH THE HELP CONVERT NON-CONSUMERS GROUP INTO CONSUMER GROUP.