Indian gurus grace MNC board rooms- The Economic Times
Indian gurus grace MNC board roomsAdd to Clippings AMANPREET SINGH AND VINOD MAHANTA TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2006 02:17:46 AM] /photo.cms?msid=2027039 NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: Call it the Indian tone at the top. A clutch of Indian gurus now grace the oak panelled board rooms of Fortune 500 companies, imparting strategic direction and adding diverse views to these companies. While western gurus such as Michael Porter, Tom Peters and Gary Hamel have graced boards of leading companies, Indian gurus are increasingly finding favour. Kellogg’s dean Dipak Jain serves on the board of Hartmax Corporation, John Deere and Company, Northern Trust Corporation and Peoples Energy. Similarly, strategy guru CK Prahlad is on the board of NCR Corp and World Resources Institute. And the author of ‘Ten rules of Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution’, Vijay Govindrajan, is not just a professor of strategy at Tuck but also on the board of Mainstay Partners and Executive Development Associates. Prof Jagdish Sheth of ‘The Rule of Three’ fame is a professor at Emory and on the board of Cryocell International and Adayana Inc. Can Harvard Profs be far behind? Nah, Tarun Khanna serves on the board of Westbridge Capital Partners International, Bunge and Educasia Inc. While his colleague Krishna Palepu and is one of the board of Enamics, a US tech startup. But it’s a win-win situation for both, the academic as well as the company. “The professors get a lucrative assignment and an insight into the operations of a company, while the company gets a management consultant to sit on its board,” says Sunil Chandiramani, national director, risk and advisory services, E&Y. No doubt, companies in mature economies have recognised this trend of adding academics to their thinktank. An increasing number of Indians in top notch B-schools are excelling at academics, doing cutting-edge research and this has resulted in more Indian faces on global boards. “Indians on global boards is not a dominating but a rising trend. India is a hot market and there is a need to tap not just the Indian mindset but the diverse skill set as well,” says Poonam Barua, regional director, India, The Conference Board, an international firm that specialises in corporate governance. So while Piyush Pandey might be the latest Indian to join a global board at Ogilvy and Mather, it is actually the intellectual thinktank of India which has managed to break this glass ceiling. So, one of the internet posterboys and hotshot marketing teacher, MohanBir Sawhney, a professor at Kelloggs is on the board of quite a few technology startups in the US as well as a part of the Techbrains advisory board at Merrill Lynch. According to Ms Barua, Indian companies define their global thinking in terms of overseas revenues, while a diverse global board that reflects markets as well as consumers is the correct benchmark of a global company. But then Gyan has been always an Indian speciality.
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