Congrats VG!

Vijay Govindarajan (VG), professor in Tuck School of business, Dartmouth College, US, and his colleague Chris Trimble have won the Accenture Award for the Best Paper published in California Management Review (CMR) in 2005. Their article was titled, ‘Organizational DNA for Strategic Innovation.’

VG mails in, “This is a major award. Our CMR article addresses a very important issue – how can large, tradition bound companies execute breakthrough strategies and innovation.”
Innovation and growth are crucial for India’s future, emphasises VG. “Even world-class companies with successful business models eventually hit the ceiling on growth. That’s what makes emerging industries so attractive. These markets represent huge opportunities for capturing long-term growth and competitive advantage. But because they lack a proven formula for making a profit, they are risky and expensive – with dire consequences for failure.”

In his co-authored article, VG had argued that every organisation’s survival depends on strategic experiments that target such untested markets, but few firms understand how to implement them successfully. “Too many managers think that a great idea is enough to get them from business plan to profitability, but somewhere in the middle of the innovation process, most organisations stumble,” explains VG.

The article revealed where firms go wrong on their journey from idea to execution – and outlines exactly what it takes to build a breakthrough business while sustaining excellence in an existing one. Ideas of high relevance, VG points out, especially for “successful tradition-rich Indian corporates such as the Tatas and Birlas, even as they pursue exciting new and innovative opportunities in the liberalised India.”