Prof. Jaideep Prabhu, currently professor of marketing and director of research at the Tanaka Business School of Imperial College, London, is all set to assume the chair of the Cambridge Centre for Indian Business as Jawaharlal Nehru professor of Indian business and enterprise at Cambridge University, UK from September 1 this year. The chair in the university’s Judge Business School, funded by a 3.2 million pound (Rs.27 crore) grant from the government of India with additional financial support (500,000 pound or Rs.4.25 crore) from the BP Foundation, was instituted during the India visit of Cambridge vice chancellor Prof. Alison Richard earlier this year to commemorate the centenary of free India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s enrollment at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied for a degree in natural sciences.
A major objective of the centre is to advise ways and means by which the hitherto autarkic Indian economy can integrate with the world economy and to promote deeper understanding of India’s interests and place in the newly emergent global economy. “Specifically, our focus will be on three major areas. First, western companies, their interests, businesses and R&D in India and the consequences of innovations from their research output here on Indian compa-nies and markets. Secondly, how Indian companies are faring in the western world and how they can succeed in the long term. And, thirdly we will focus on highlighting and developing business innovations which will help to mine the fortune — in Prof. C.K. Prahlad’s memorable metaphor — at the bottom of the social pyramid where people live on $2 per day,” Prabhu told your correspondent in an exclusive telephonic interview from London.
Excited about the prospects of the newly established centre, Prabhu believes that the centre’s research output will benefit India, UK and the world. “University education has a close linkage with the global economy as it produces the next generation of leaders, talent and much needed innovations from sustained R&D. Innovations are at the heart of sustained growth and we’ll contribute towards it by research related to technological innovation, globalisation of firms from emerging economies, and the relationship between the knowledge economy, entrepreneurship and economic development. Our research output will strongly impact growth and development in agriculture, retail, healthcare, energy, education and infrastructure. This is important for India to sustain its impressive growth trajectory,” explains Prabhu.
With Cambridge University having already established a Judge Business School-IIM-Ahmedabad exchange programme and having signed MoUs with CII and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Prabhu is confident that the new centre will actively engage with Indian academics, scholars and businessmen. “Exchanges and interaction is a major objective of the centre and there will be more of them with IIMs, IISc, ISB etc as we go along. The centre will become a forum for the dissemination of research output and for engagement between academics, businesses, policymakers and commu-nities in India, the UK and elsewhere,” vows Prabhu, an alumnus of IIT-Delhi and University of Southern California who has won global plaudits for studying offshoring and outsourcing of innovation by the world’s biggest multinationals to emerging markets such as India and China.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)