{"id":218009,"date":"2010-01-14T11:46:57","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T16:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gereports.com\/?p=4971"},"modified":"2010-01-14T11:46:57","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T16:46:57","slug":"reverse-innovation-hits-harvard%e2%80%99s-most-influential-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/218009","title":{"rendered":"Reverse Innovation hits Harvard\u2019s most influential list"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span>The radical concept of \u201cReverse Innovation\u201d — which GE introduced in the article, \u201cHow GE is Disrupting Itself<\/a>,\u201d in October\u2019s issue of the Harvard Business Review<\/em> — continues to reverberate through the R&D world. This month, with the first decade of the 2000s officially over, the Review\u2019s<\/em> editors looked at the past ten years of management thinking and chose 12 of what they dubbed the \u201cmost influential management ideas of the millennium<\/a> (so far).\u201d Reverse innovation made the critical cut, they said, because globalization is fundamentally changing when it comes to emerging markets. GE\u2019s concept, put simply, is this: Rather than follow the historical route of developing high-end products and adapting them for emerging markets, reverse innovation focuses on developing local technologies in these regions and then distributing them globally.<\/p>\n

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\nGoing forward in reverse:<\/span> GE Global Research<\/span><\/a>, which is the company\u2019s technology development arm, operates research centers in New York, Germany, China, and Bangalore, India, pictured above. \u201cWhy India? It’s very straightforward,” Guillermo Wille, the center\u2019s managing director, tells The Financial Times<\/em>. \u201cThere are few other countries where you can hire such large numbers of engineers so quickly. China is comparable but after that, nothing comes close.\u201d<\/div>\n

Reverse innovation in action can be seen in GE\u2019s research center in Bangalore, India — a city that is nicknamed \u201cIndia\u2019s Silcon Valley\u201d and is helping to transform the entire country into a major center of global innovation. As The Financial Times\u2019 Joe Leahy<\/a> writes in an in-depth story this week about India\u2019s technology metamorphosis: \u201cWalk into [GE\u2019s] John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore and you could be forgiven for thinking you have strayed into Q division — the laboratory dedicated to inventing new gadgets — from a James Bond film.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, at one end of the million square foot center, you\u2019ll find scientists \u201ctesting a special ‘pedestrian-safe’ bumper bar for cars, which can hit people at speed without maiming them,\u201d the paper notes. Elsewhere, researchers are \u201cworking on locomotive engines that run on methanol extracted from grass growing alongside India’s railway lines, and on super-compact medical equipment that costs a fraction of the price of similar products in the west.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\nIn the video clip above, GE\u2019s Mano Manoharan describes some of GE\u2019s work in Bangalore.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

Professor Vijay Govindarajan of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College — and chief innovation consultant at GE \u2013 co-authored the Harvard Business Review<\/em> article with GE\u2019s Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. Explaining the concept of reverse innovation, VG, as he is known, tells the FT: \u201cWe are at the cusp of a new paradigm in which innovation will happen in India and China first and then it’ll go to the rich countries. Companies, if they don’t realize it, will be toast.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FT notes that it\u2019s not just GE that sees Bangalore as a bright spot. Today, 200 multinationals have R&D centers in India, and household names such as Microsoft, Intel, Google, and IBM are all opening facilities there. Although GE\u2019s Bangalore center mostly develops global products, \u201cit has begun to focus on innovations suitable for the developing world,\u201d the paper observes. \u201cThe best-known such product is a handheld electrocardiogram unit that costs about $1,000 to make — about one-tenth of the cost of a standard machine. This suits rural India, where poverty and weak transport links make it virtually impossible for many people to get to hospital\u2026 But these technologies are now also making their way back to developed markets. The electrocardiogram is being sold in the US\u201d \u2013 which is exactly how the reverse innovation model is designed to play out.<\/p>\n

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\nInnovation engine:<\/span> GE\u2019s Bangalore research center, pictured above, opened in 2000 with 275 scientists and engineers and today employs 4,300. To learn about one of the technologies that has jumped from GE\u2019s lab in India to the marketplace, read \u201cNew Technology to Trap Killer Sparks\u201d on IEE Spectrum<\/span><\/a>, which features the work being done by T. Asokan, senior scientist at GE\u2019s research center in Bangalore. The team\u2019s work resulted in an arc flash absorber innovation. It\u2019s practical application can be seen in a video in our GE Reports story, \u201cShock and awe: GE unveils arc flash explosion blocker<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/div>\n

* Read HBR\u2019s ranking, \u201cThe decade in Management Ideas<\/a>,\u201d and comment on their blog
\n* Read Part 1: \u201cReverse innovation: How GE is disrupting itself<\/a>\u201d on GE Reports
\n* Download a free full copy<\/a> of GE\u2019s HBR article: \u201cHow GE is disrupting itself\u201d
\n* Read Part 2: \u201cReverse innovation: Building GE\u2019s local growth model<\/a>\u201d on GE Reports
\n* Read Joe Leahy’s full story, \u201cIndia: A nation develops<\/a>,\u201d in The Financial Times<\/em>
\n* Read \u201cCheers! To a decade of innovation at GE\u2019s labs<\/a> \u201c on GE Reports
\n* Hear more from VG in our story, \u201cWinning micro customers in mega markets<\/a>\u201d
\n* Read our follow-up VG story, \u201cLocalized breakthroughs go global<\/a>\u201d
\n* Sign up for VG\u2019s newsletter and read his blog at: vijaygovindarajan.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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The radical concept of \u201cReverse Innovation\u201d — which GE introduced in the article, \u201cHow GE is Disrupting Itself,\u201d in October\u2019s issue of the Harvard Business Review — continues to reverberate through the R&D world. This month, with the first decade of the 2000s officially over, the Review\u2019s editors looked at the past ten years of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4069,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}