The field of management is filled with ideas, fads and labels, which managers adopt in their vocabulary. What begins as a good idea often outlives its utility, like the term re-engineering, for instance. The most important part about such ideas and labels (like globalisation, for instance) is how you define them, and what you do about them. The greatest danger about such fads is just talking about them.

All of us recognise that having a sustainable business is essential. A sustainable business is one where an entrepreneur has captured a piece of intellectual property with value and within a context. Thus there are three elements that make a business sustainable — intellectual property, value and context. Globalisation is a way of constantly changing the context to deliver better value through an intellectual property. There are many vectors that can help us to define context — it could be geography, people or time. What is important is that a company constantly evolves its intellectual properties to suit the contemporary context and thus remain viable.

To put it in metaphorical terms, business is like raising a child. Entrepreneurs, like parents, are very excited about the growth of their business. Just as parents wish to make their children good citizens, entrepreneurs wish to make their enterprises good corporate citizens. This is the vision that shapes a business over a period of time. However, just like the role of a society evolves, the role of a business also changes. I like to think of companies in four phases — pioneer, settler, cultivator and harvester. A pioneer is a company that is entering new business areas, for example, the Tata Group’s foray into the telecom industry. A settler is one which has been in the industry for some time, for example the Tata Group’s presence in passenger cars. A cultivator is one who has started reaping rewards through better productivity. A harvester is one who thinks it is time to cash out.

When I think of globalisation, I have an image of a company having an intellectual property or capability which can deliver value. Since the company needs to improve its intellectual property, it could consider changing its context by entering new geographies. In some cases it would do so by market exploration (pioneers), in other cases, through appointment of distributors (settler) or through a joint venture / alliance (cultivator).

Several Tata companies are global, however each one in its own imperfect way. The important thing is the desire to become better at it. Tata Steel has begun to be global with its steel exports and its new ferro chrome business. Likewise, Tata Motors with its long standing initiatives in exports, the Rover project and the proposed Daewoo acquisition. Tata Chemicals, whose soda ash business was under pressure, is now seeking to get into exports and scale it up. Likewise with Indian Hotels and Tata Tea, particularly the Tetley acquisition. Interestingly, Tata Consultancy Services has come the other way. It is an international business with a relatively low domestic base. It might have started as a bodyshop several decades ago but today has scaled up the value chain and delivered value globally.

From the beginning of recorded history till 1947, India has been an outward looking global economy with a consistent trade surplus. As recently as 1925, India was Number Four in world trade. After an aberrant period of seven decades, the wheel is turning, offering India (and also the Tatas) a new context and a new challenge.

	Driving global strategy — Ratan Tata
	Global corporation — J.J. Irani
	Truly global — Kishor Chaukar
	Empowering people — Satish Pradhan
	Legal recourse — Bharat Vasani

Uploaded on February 18, 2004