Vijay Govindarajan

Vijay Govindarajan is the Earl C. Daum  Professor of Int’l Business and the Founding Director of the Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.He also served as the 2009 Professor-in-Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant for General Electric. In his talks, Govindarajan shares with audiences his work with CEOs and top management teams from various Global Fortune 500 firms where he challenges them to escalate their thinking around strategy as innovation.

VG, as he is known, believes that in an era of constant change, companies need to constantly redefine their strategies – thus strategy is innovation. Govindarajan has been named one of the Top Ten Business School Professors in Corporate Executive Education, by Business Week; is one of the Top Five Most Respected Executive Coaches on Strategy, rated by Forbes; a member of Outstanding Faculty, named by Business Week in its Guide to Best B-Schools; a Top 50 Management Thinker, named by The London Times; Outstanding Teacher of the Year, voted by MBA students; and “superstar” Management Thinker from India, named by Business Week. Prior to joining the faculty at Tuck, Govindarajan was on the faculties of Harvard Business School and the Indian Institute of Management.

PROGRAM TOPICS

Strategy is Innovation
Securing global presence is anything but synonymous with possessing global competitive advantage. Presence in strategically important markets is certainly a precondition for creating global competitive advantage. To convert global presence into global competitive advantage, the company must pursue three value creation opportunities: adapting to local market differences, exploiting economies of global scale, and maximizing the knowledge transfer across borders. Pursuing these value creation opportunities requires the firm to design the right type of organization (in terms of structure, systems, people, process, and culture), an organization that can simultaneously optimize local responsiveness, global scale, and knowledge transfer.

Organizational Capabilities for Global Leadership
Securing global presence is anything but synonymous with possessing global competitive advantage. Presence in strategically important markets is certainly a precondition for creating global competitive advantage. To convert global presence into global competitive advantage, the company must pursue three value creation opportunities: adapting to local market differences, exploiting economies of global scale, and maximizing the knowledge transfer across borders. Pursuing these value creation opportunities requires the firm to design the right type of organization (in terms of structure, systems, people, process, and culture), an organization that can simultaneously optimize local responsiveness, global scale, and knowledge transfer.

 

Full Biography

He is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He was the first Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric. He worked with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt to write “How GE is Disrupting Itself”, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that pioneered the concept of reverse innovation – any innovation that is adopted first in the developing world. HBR rated reverse innovation as one of the ten big ideas of the decade. He has been ranked #3 on the Thinkers 50 list of the world’s most influential business thinkers.

VG writes about innovation and execution on his blog, Harvard Business Review, and Bloomberg Business Week. He is a co-leader of a global initiative to design a $300 House.

Govindarajan has been identified as a leading management thinker by influential publications including: Outstanding Faculty, named by Business Week in its Guide to Best B-Schools; Top Ten Business School Professor in Corporate Executive Education, named by Business Week; Top Five Most Respected Executive Coach on Strategy, rated by Forbes; Top 50 Management Thinker, named by The London Times; Rising Super Star, cited by The Economist; Outstanding Teacher of the Year, voted by MBA students.

Prior to joining the faculty at Tuck, VG was on the faculties of Harvard Business School, INSEAD (Fontainebleau) and the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad, India).

The recipient of numerous awards for excellence in research, Govindarajan was inducted into the Academy of Management Journals’ Hall of Fame, and ranked by Management International Review as one of the Top 20 North American Superstars for research in strategy and organization. One of his papers was recognized as one of the ten most-often cited articles in the entire 40-year history of Academy of Management Journal.

VG is a rare faculty who has published more than ten articles in the top academic journals (Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal) and more than ten articles in prestigious practitioner journals including several best-selling HBR articles. He received the McKinsey Award for the best article in HBR. He published the New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best Seller Reverse Innovation.

VG has worked with CEOs and top management teams in more than 25% of the Fortune 500 firms to discuss, challenge, and escalate their thinking about strategy. His clients include: Boeing, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Deere, FedEx, GE, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, J.P. Morgan Chase, J&J, New York Times, P&G, Sony, and Wal-Mart. He has been a keynote speaker in the BusinessWeek CEO Forum, HSM World Business Forum, TED, and World Economic Forum at Davos. VG is a fellow at Innosight, an innovation consulting firm.

VG received his doctorate from the Harvard Business School and was awarded the Robert Bowne Prize for the best thesis proposal. He also received his MBA with distinction from the Harvard Business School where he was included in the Dean’s Honor List. Prior to this, VG received his Chartered Accountancy degree in India where he was awarded the President’s Gold Medal for obtaining the first rank nationwide.