Rob Wolcott is quoted in this businessweek article about faster, cheaper product development in India, “driven by scarce resources and attention to customers’ immediate needs, not their lifestyle wants.” This type of innovation, aimed at serving vast swaths of humanity with very low income, is not about just redesigning products to take out cost. In Chapter 6 of Grow From Within, we provide several examples of sophisticated new business designs customized to local infrastructure, supplier, regulations and consumer preferences.
Being a global company is not just about sourcing and selling overseas. It’s about building a new business. Companies that master local specialization while retaining the benefits of global breadth will prosper. Corporate entrepreneurs, armed with the tools of new business design and development, provide a potent force in this context.
