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| Dipak Jain, Dean, Kellogg School of Management, in discussion with K Ramachandran, Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship, ISB. |
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| “Nanosecond Culture means things are changing very rapidly. Not only is change inevitable, but change is happening at an accelerated speed. So, when the world is changing so rapidly, anything that you predict is going to be wrong.” |
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growth. Otherwise it can get chaotic.
The economies in transition should have an entrepreneurial mindset. They need to make the best return of their limited resources. So an entrepreneur should create a small team, and seek venture capital that can put the seed capital. Because, with venture capital, you not only get the captain but also get the management. This is what I call control. When you are in economies in transition, you need to create alliances with countries, where they can come and do that part of work. In many countries, where they are investing in other countries, they took the liberty to create the infrastructure. I have been told that China is spending lots of money in Africa building roads and dams because they think that tomorrow Africa will be the largest source of natural resources. But, in order to extract things from mines, you need to have roads.
Yes, China is investing lots in Africa. That raises another question. We have most of the frameworks of marketing principles of the developed countries, largely in the western context. If you take economies in transition, including places like, say, Africa, the context is different. To what extent are these principles or framework or theories of marketing, let’s say functional areas, relevant, especially, as you have also addedthe entrepreneurial dimension?
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The first point is that the marketing principles or concepts would remain the same. But what would change is the execution. Because, execution depends on the context.
Execution is not context independent. That is why they say ‘think global and act local.’ Thinking global is thinking of global concepts. Act local means implement those concepts depending on the local conditions. Thus, the marketing concepts are global concepts but they need to be executed with local data or local conditions. If you have to apply that in Africa and say that you want to have a look at the database of all the customers there, it’s a foolish question to ask, because we don’t have the database.
But that does not mean that segmentation cannot be done. You might have to use adhoc or other proxy measures. You should do segmentation with whatever data or information you have. Like in India, you can go and talk to the village leader. He will give you the insights and direct you. There are other sources and resources that we can tap into in order to get a better understanding of these concepts. If we look at marketing and talk about segmentation, targeting and positioning, we have to do that whether we go into emerging economy or a developed economy. The notions of segmentation, targeting and positioning |
