Jim’s Note:
Culture oftentimes gets short attention in economics, yet it’s an enormously powerful factor in determining the success, development, or failure of economies. In the this video, Tarun Khanna looks at China and India. These two countries are neighbors. They are the two most populous countries in the world. Both are rapidly developing and growing economically into powerhouses of the world economy after having lived in the shadow, if not rule, of Western European nations. But while the two nations share many things, they have very different cultures and that makes a huge difference in how they develop and grow.
What to Watch
The entire lecture. It is approximately 55 minutes long. Yes, it has a fair amount of plain “talking head non-action”, but it is reasonably interesting and punctuated with some good graphics. It is a video of a live lecture given as part of the Google Tech Talks series.
What It Is About
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 what used 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. The speaker is 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.
Where to Watch
The video is approximately 55 minutes long. If the embedded viewer won’t work or doesn’t show, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8liTZBhDQ3o