India Inc.: A Lesson in Business Design

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Technology as Infrastructure
Rapid and broad deployment of technology in lieu of physical infrastructure can accelerate delivery of both commercial and social services effectively and efficiently. ITC's e-Choupal system demonstrates how quickly an idea inspired by an unmet need can take off using basic technology to establish a pervasive infrastructure. By setting up Internet kiosks in rural villages, e-Choupal provides farmers with timely and relevant weather information, transparent price discovery and access to wider markets. Now serving over 40,000 villages and 4 million farmers, e-Choupal is transforming the way farmers conduct business and opening windows of opportunity to rural India. Not only is this creating economic value, it is linking business to a larger societal purpose. This developmental delivery mechanism is now being applied to pilot projects in health care, educational services, and water management.

Mobilize the Masses
Many countries like India have effectively tapped human networks to deliver both commercial and social services. Instead of devising models to pay the unemployed, devise models to employ the unemployed. The extraordinary Mumbai network of dabbawalas has delivered over 200,000 lunches to people in offices and schools from their home every day for decades. This organic delivery network employs a robust yet simple scheduling and dispatch system of barely literate delivery men to handle complex deliveries in a cost and time-efficient manner. Until only recently, this had been done every day without the use of technology.

Rethinking the Model
Creating new models requires challenging the status quo and rethinking activities that create value. India has a lagging education system and an enormous emerging workforce. By 2020, India will have the largest labor surplus in the world—45 million people. To capitalize on this resource and become a major global R&D hub, India has completely rethought the ways in which it recruits and trains its R&D workforce. Instead of counting on an army of PhDs to make their way through the educational system to serve the commercial agenda, Indian industry has developed a "surrogate education system" that can take workers with weak educational backgrounds and turn them into world-class R&D specialists by developing rigorous training programs and integrating best practices into a codified industry-based skill development program. With this resourceful new model, offshore R&D has become a booming business in India, and is expected to grow over 20% a year, to a $21 billion industry in India by 2012.

All of these successes represent new models of doing business, reflecting the principles of successful business design. Above all else, these examples emphasize that it is always worth challenging the status quo and asking "What if?" Sometimes the more radical possibilities inspire a smarter reality.

Heather Fraser is Director of Designworks, a center for design-based innovation and education at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. As Director and professor of Business Design, she leads research and development in the area of Business Design, including development of methodologies, MBA student programs, executive education, applied research projects and collaboration with schools and practitioners around the world.