Nitin Nohria became the tenth dean of Harvard Business School on 1 July 2010. He previously served as co-chair of the Leadership Initiative, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Development, and Head of the Organizational Behavior unit.
His intellectual interests center on human motivation, leadership, corporate transformation and accountability, and sustainable economic and human performance. He and Amanda Pepper collaborated with XPlane in creating the Paths to Power video to generate a discussion of the value and importance of leadership in addressing some of society's most pressing problems. In June 2010, in anticipation of a conference he hosted with Rakesh Khurana and Scott Snook, Harvard Business Review launched a six-week blog on how leadership might look in the future.
Dean Nitin Nohria’s oration at the J.R.D. Tata Memorial Lecture 2010 captures the spirit of globalization and the way that business is conducted in today’s world.
Speech made by Nitin Noriah at the J.R.D. Tata Memorial Lecture 2010
In fact this imperative exists not just for India but for countries everywhere. As I have noted, one of the key lessons of the 20th century, when American business dominated the global scene, is that the most successful economies are those that are the most dynamic. Another way to put this is to say that the most successful countries economically over the long run are the ones that are best at innovation. And, indeed, cutting-edge innovation is now happening and will accelerate all over the world.
An interesting example for Indian companies to draw inspiration from is Samsung, in Korea. Today, Samsung has become such a major force in consumer electronics that it has displaced Sony, once considered the iconic innovative company in the world. It is even challenging Nokia, another company that is often closely associated with the word innovation, for dominance in the mobile phone market. It is just as likely that the next major global innovation in consumer electronics (which now includes cell phones) will come from Samsung as from Nokia, Sony, or even Apple. Samsung is a company whose products could once be found only on the bottom shelves at Wal-Mart and other value-oriented retailers; now, it has futuristic concept stores in New York and other cities that rival the flagship Apple, Nokia, and Sony stores. So this is an example of a company that has not previously been an innovator, but has gone through the process of first becoming an efficient producer, then going out and competing on the global stage, and now challenging some of the major innovators in the world.
Another fascinating example of such a company is BYD, a Chinese automaker that—having already beaten GM, Toyota, and Nissan to market with the first plug-in hybrid—is now at the front of the race to develop a full-size electric car for the mass market. BYD develops its own cutting-edge battery technology and says that the lithium-ion ferrous phosphate battery used in its E6 electric car not only costs half what standard lithium-ion batteries do but also lasts longer and uses non-toxic fluid. I was recently talking to the chief marketing officer of Volkswagen—who is making a big push for his company to win this race—and he told me that the company that he most fears might beat him to the post is BYD. And this is a company from a country that is still considered an emerging economy.
