In the early 1990s, China was a relatively small economy which had just built its very first highway. Mobile phones were a luxury purchased mainly by rich Europeans. And, social media meant walking over to your neighbor to borrow his/her newspaper. How the world has changed over the last twenty years. Look ahead to 2025. Notwithstanding how much change we have witnessed in recent years, it’s a certainty that the quantum of change over the next ten years will be even greater than over the last twenty. In this talk, Professor Gupta discusses the six megatrends that will drive this transformation: Read More >

• Restructuring of the global economy;
• Growing volatility and risks;
• Divergent demographics;
• Digitization of everything;
• Global warming and environmental crunch; and
• Rise of the empowered individual.

The collective impact of these global game changers will be such that the structure and dynamics of the world’s economy, politics, and culture in 2025 will be fundamentally different from what they are today. Professor Gupta also discusses what these megatrends mean for countries, companies, investors and individuals in terms of who can expect to thrive in the new era. Read Less ^

For almost three decades, China and India have been the two most dynamic emerging markets in the world. Unlike Latin America or Africa, both countries are resource poor. Yet, since 1990, both have been the world’s two fastest growing large economies. The answer lies in the ability of the two countries to boost the productivity of their peoples at some of the most rapid rates in the world. Read More >

As of 2015, China is the world’s second largest economy and India the eighth largest – at market exchange rates. By 2025, while China would have reduced the size gap with the United States, India is likely to have overtaken Italy, France, UK, Germany and even Japan to become the third largest. By the middle of the 21st century, both China and India are likely to overtake the U.S. also to become the world’s two largest economies. In many ways, this will be a back-to-the-future story, since China and India were the world’s two largest economies for much of recorded history. They became poor only during the 19th and 20th centuries when the industrial revolution passed them by.

As China and India continue to rise, they are transforming the global economy in multiple ways:

• They are two of the world’s biggest and fastest growing marketsfor almost every product or service.
• They are two of the world’s most important platforms for cost reductionfor both blue- and white-collar work.
• They are the world’s two most important rising powers for technology and innovation.
• They are also the world’s most prolific springboards for the emergence of new, powerful, and ambitious global competitors.

In this talk, Professor Gupta discusses the factors propelling China and India, the challenges that each country faces, and implications of these developments for multinational corporations. Read Less ^

The structure and dynamics of the global economy are changing rapidly. Despite the ups and downs in individual economies, emerging markets as a group continue to grow at three times the pace of developed markets; by 2025, they will account for over half of the world’s GDP. The diffusion of mobile broadband to every corner of the earth continues to make cross-border collaboration easier, cheaper, and more ubiquitous. And, the technology revolution continues unabated – electric and/or autonomous cars, wearable computing, genetic engineering, shale oil and gas, human-scale robots, etc. These developments will lead to the disruption of industries at an even faster pace than what we’ve seen over the last decade. Read More >

Given these developments, what must today’s corporations do to emerge or remain as the global leaders in their industries ten years from now? The answer lies in: (i) rethinking global strategy i.e., commitment to emerging markets, atomization of the value chain, and leveraging global platforms to create highly customized local solutions; (ii) rethinking global innovation i.e., 360-degree innovation, distributed innovation, open innovation, and frugal innovation; (iii) rethinking global organization i.e., connect-and-coordinate rather than command-and-control plus a strong one-company culture; and (iv) globalizing the corporate mindset i.e., cultivating leaders who combine in-depth knowledge of key markets and cultures with an ability to connect the dots globally. Read Less ^

Globalization is a double-edged sword. The global or globalizing firm has the potential to reap several types of benefits – the vast potential of a much larger market arena, providing coordinated products ands services to global customers, capturing scale- and location-based cost efficiencies, and exposure to a multiplicity of new product and process ideas. Read More >

However, globalization also exposes the firm to numerous strategic and organizational challenges emanating from a dramatic increase in diversity, complexity, and uncertainty – external as well as internal to the firm. How managers address these challenges determines whether globalization yields competitive advantage or disadvantage and makes the company stronger or weaker. “Smart Globalization” is the ability to capture the benefits and minimize the costs and risks.

Using real-world examines, in this talk, Professor Gupta discusses how corporate leaders can systematically globalize their firms’ market presence, what logic should guide them in leveraging the world’s physical, technological and talent resources to create competitive advantage, and what they must do to globalize the mindset of the people in the company. Read Less ^