In Global by Design: How to Create Innovations That Scale, Travel, and Transform, Vijay Govindarajan argues that the most powerful innovations are designed from the ground up for emerging markets like rural China or India, and then travel back to disrupt wealthy ones.
Govindarajan is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business and one of the world’s foremost experts on strategy and innovation, most known for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Reverse Innovation. In his new book, co-authored with MIT engineer Amos Winter, he fuses business strategy with engineering science to show how high-value, low-cost products built for poorer countries can win there first and then upend established markets abroad, offering a roadmap for innovators across engineering, business, NGOs, and government.
In his conversation with Nikolaus Lang, global leader of the BCG Henderson Institute, he discusses how GE built a $15,000 ultrasound machine for rural China; why most multinationals chase only the thin top slice of emerging markets; the three phases of his innovation framework; the difference between serial and parallel reverse innovation; and why globalization behaves like gravity even in a fragmented, multipolar world.
Key topics discussed:
03:29 | How reverse innovation works: GE’s ultrasound machine for rural China
06:39 | Why most multinationals aren’t global by design
08:01 | The mistake of serving only the thin top slice of emerging markets
10:00 | Phase 1, elucidating requirements: P&G’s 3,000 hours redesigning a razor
13:00 | Phase 2, closing the innovation gap: GE’s low-cost CAT scanner
16:48 | Phase 3, serial vs. parallel reverse innovation
20:20 | Value-driven innovation, the Segway cautionary tale, and where the biggest opportunities lie
24:14 | Global by design in a geopolitically fragmented world
Additional inspirations from Vijay Govindarajan: