Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures an...

Google Tech TalksMarch 12, 2009ABSTRACT

"Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours"

Removing half a billion people from poverty and into the productive workforce will profoundly affect on the world economy. India and China are doing just that with insane growth rates and lots of whatused to be American jobs: China is the factory floor and India the back-office, software shop. China is top-down party driven. India is a messy, vibrant democracy.

This may be the complementary duo that changes the world. Including your world.

Come hear Professor Tarun Khanna in a discussion about his book, Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours. Called well worth reading by The Economist and entertaining by the Financial Times, Khanna's book shows how Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs are creating change through new business models.

Speaker: Tarun Khanna
Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School, where he has studied and worked with multinational and indigenous companies and investors in emerging markets worldwide. He joined the faculty in 1993, after obtaining an engineering degree from Princeton University (1988) and a Ph.D. from Harvard (1993), and an interim stint on Wall Street. During this time, he has served as the head of several courses on strategy and international business targeted to MBA students and senior executives at Harvard.

His new book, Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours, was published in February 2008 by Harvard Business School Press (Penguin in South Asia), with translations into several languages underway. It focuses on the drivers of entrepreneurship in China and India and builds on over a decade of work with companies, investors and non-profits in developing countries worldwide.

His scholarly work has been published in a range of economics and management journals, several of which he also serves in an editorial capacity. Articles in the Harvard Business Review (e.g. China + India: The Power of Two, 2007; Emerging Giants: Building World Class Companies in Emerging Markets, 2006) and Foreign Policy (e.g. Can India Overtake China?, 2003) distill the implications of this research for practicing managers. His work is frequently featured in global news magazines as well as on TV and radio.

He serves on the boards and advisory boards of several companies in the financial services, automotive, life sciences and agribusiness sectors. He actively invests in and mentors startups in Asia, and volunteers time with non-profits in India, e.g. the Parliamentary Research Services in New Delhi, which seeks to provide non-partisan research input to Indias Members of Parliament in advance of legislative sessions with a view to enhancing the quality of democratic discourse.

In 2007, he was nominated to be a Young Global Leader (under 40) by the World Economic Forum.

He makes his home in Newton, MA, with his wife, daughter and son.