ATCA Briefings

Dear ATCA Colleagues

[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]

The signatories of Tomorrow's Global Company International Inquiry Report include: ABB, Alcan, Anglo American, Amnesty International Business Group, BP, Dr Reddy's, Ford, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Infosys, KPMG, Leaders' Quest, McKinsey, Standard Chartered, SUEZ, and SustainAbility. The international inquiry draws on their experience and on dialogues, workshops and interviews conducted across the world in countries including Australia, China, France, India, South Africa, United Kingdom, and United States by Tomorrow's Company led by Mark Goyder.

Mehmood Khan is the Global Leader of Unilever Innovation Process Management based at the landmark Unilever House, City of London, UK. His latest set of responsibilities have added another dimension to his core expertise in the Unilever Business of accelerating business growth through Innovation by following common global process and systems. The nature of work involves working with people around Unilever by establishing Unilever Innovation Communities across the business as well as spanning across Categories, Brands, Continents and Country boundaries. Through Mehmood's drive, these Innovation Communities provide platforms for building innovation capabilities, incubate creativities, and grow them into true business innovations.

Since 1982 Mehmood has been with Unilever and has worked in wide areas of the trans-national business: Marketing, Exports, Procurement, Business Development and Innovation. Out of 22 years at Unilever, 10 years have been in pioneering new Unilever businesses in diverse countries including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia and North Korea, along with developing new portfolios in China and other countries in East Asia. Mehmood originates from India and has lived in Holland, Singapore and is now living in the UK. He graduated from Haryana Agricultural University (HAU) Hissar and then did his post graduate Studies in Management (1977) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). While still at IIMA, Mehmood worked with Prof Ravi J Matthai on Experiments in Educational Innovation. On graduation from IIMA, Mehmood worked in the voluntary sector on turning Indian livestock to become a more productive resource and making them into a base for cottage industries. This work led Mehmood to building professional farmers organisations. Mehmood is a Managing Trustee of Rasuli Kanwar Khan Trust and IIM Europe and a Trustee of GEN Initiative UK. He is married to Sanobar for 27 years. Together they have two college going children. Sanobar runs her own North Indian Restaurant business in Mongolia and an electronics marketing company in UK, China & India. He writes:

Dear DK and Colleagues

Re: India Opportunity: Lessons in Innovation and Humility

Let me share my experiences based on my education and experience at Unilever.

In the summer of 1976, I worked in a project called "Jawaja -- Experiments in Educational Innovation." The project had a lot of role models in Prof Ravi Matthai, the First Director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and other luminaries such as Helena, Utpal, Subbu et al. These people came from varied backgrounds. This was a true experiment of diversity, cross functional working, gender mix, cultures and diverse minds. The uniting vision in the group were our common mission to make a difference to rural India and our values which included a democratic way of life, respect for individuals' own space, holding truth as the basis of our lives and freedom of choice. We documented the experiment at Jawaja, Ajmer district, Rajasthan, under the title "Rural University."

Some of the lessons we have learned from Jawaja, Rajasthan, and other rural experiences:

1. Design and Design Maps are the basic fundamental of agreeing on the concept at the start of the journey. Design is a source of inspiration to stay on the course. Design opens the frontier of creativity, challenges us on what is possible. It brings meaning to life.

2. In the collaborative world , the word control has to take a back seat to the mutual desire to co-create. Imagination of a bigger dream is far more important. To achieve something big you have to let go of some small things. That is why control has to take a back seat. I am not talking abdication in fact the contrary. Co-creators cover for each others' weaknesses and can be a source for strength. Positive energy created by value addition becomes a driving force. It is life changing.

3. We are living in a sublime world. Functional boundaries are eroding for the good of the world. Learning is a life long process. To live life with purpose requires reaching out to other areas and humility is needed in terms of behaviour. The reward comes in the form of the end product.. In any case creativity, requires one to be open minded.

4. Get the basics right. To start, values on which one wishes to live life are basic foundation blocks. Next is focus. Hard work helps -- if it is part of the value system then life becomes more enjoyable. Learning from each experience and making that learning as part of one's habits helps in going for excellence in the cumulative journey of life.

5. See the developing world as an opportunity. Countries like India are young. In the villages, where we are running our development experiments, we are finding as high as 70% to 80% of the population below 18 years of age. So "Catch them Young!" should be the motto for making a loyal consumer base. However that will not happen by superficial campaigns. Companies need to have commitments for deeper insights to draw medium to long term plans and live through these plans. A young population is not only one of consumers, they are also an enormous source of talent for long term resourcing, management and creativity.

6. Application of Technology & Management. In fact, it is new technology and and its creative application there of: use of micro-credit, latest management thinking; and all the advances in the collaborative way of working which are needed to remove illiteracy, ignorance and poverty. For example, we use the most advanced techniques of "stakeholder interviews" to understand the areas of focus for our work.

As a global citizen I find countries like India, both a source of inspiration and frustration. Lots of keys which inspire me are: democracy, deep heritage of values from ancient scripts to the mahatmas, young population, diversity, flora and fauna entrepreneurship, centres of excellence like NID, AIIMS, IITs & IIMs. Lot of areas frustrate me and the biggest one which causes real concern are poor and myopic thinking on areas like water and its management; environmental degradation and lack of urgency on addressing infrastructure issues.

I was transferred by Unilever 18 years ago from India to Holland, then to Singapore and 9 years ago to London. However I never lost contact with my village and India. Every year I visit Nai Nangla (the village where I was born and where my parents are buried). As a time horizon, I do see countries like India moving closer to the Tipping Point where Sustainable Development and making India in to a Developed Economy in our life time is a real possibility. India now has critical mass where the rest of world looks to India as a source of opportunity in its own interest. This is the real turn around in the last few years. We recently hosted IIM Global Management Summit on Business models and Talent. Evidence was clearly visible both from the attendees and speakers -- of which many were not of Indian origin -- where India was seen as a major opportunity.

Innovation is the only way for companies and economies to grow. For this purpose, management needs creative talent and people who are a source of new ideas. Interdependency between management and creative people is going to be the key source of addressing opportunities in this collaborative co-creative world which is emerging.

For Sustainable Development, we need to draw a Design map of the world now and enshrine it through legislation within the United Nations so this becomes the source for executive actions. Reduction of poverty is a real possibility across the world but it will happen with imagination of the design map, drawn collaboratively by real people, multi-functional talent, entrepreneurs, managements and leaders together.

Last few thoughts: People (Society), Government and Enterprise have to work collaboratively. People (Society) need to elect Competent Governments. Competent Governments set a Framework where Enterprise is given the lead role to transform the Economy. The responsible Enterprise needs to take a Sustainable view of Value Creation where all Stakeholders get the rewards from the prosperity of the Enterprise. That is the kind of world I wish to see.

Warm regards

Mehmood

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