Vijay Govindarajan


Vijay Govindarajan, popularly known as VG, is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business and Marvin Bower Fellow, 2015–16 at Harvard Business School. He is a Faculty Partner in the Silicon Valley Incubator . He worked as General Electric's first chief innovation consultant and professor in residence from 2008–10. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author and a two-time winner of the prestigious McKinsey Award for the best article published in Harvard Business Review. VG was inducted into the in 2019 for his life-long work dedicated to the field of management, strategy, and innovation. VG received Thinkers 50 Distinguished Achievement Awards in two different categories, a rare feat: Breakthrough Idea Award in 2011 and Innovation Award in 2019.

Education

In 1974, Govindarajan received his chartered accountancy degree, where he was awarded the President's Gold Medal by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, the award is given to the first ranked chartered accountancy student in India. Govindarajan went on to earn his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1976 where he graduated with distinction. Two years later, he earned his D.B.A. from Harvard Business School where he was awarded the Robert Bowne Prize For Best Thesis Proposal.

Career

Govindarajan started his career as a professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad where he served as an associate professor from 1978–80. From 1980 to 1985, Govindarajan served as a visiting associate professor at Harvard University and as an associate professor at Ohio State University. In 1985, he joined the Tuck School of Business as a professor, where he has taught ever since. During his time at Tuck, Govindarajan has also served as a visiting professor at INSEAD's Fontainebleau campus and the International University of Japan.
Govindarajan served as General Electric's first Chief Innovation Consultant and Professor in Residence from 2008–10. While working at GE, Govindarajan co-authored a paper entitled "How GE Is Disrupting Itself" with Chris Trimble and GE's CEO Jeffrey Immelt. "How GE Is Disrupting Itself," which introduced the idea of reverse innovation. HBR picked reverse innovation as one of the Great Moments in Management in the Last Century.

Scholarly work

Govindarajan is the author of fourteen books and has published articles in academic journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review and the Strategic Management Journal. Govindarajan is a rare faculty who has published more than twenty articles in the top academic journals and more than twenty articles in prestigious practitioner journals including several best-selling HBR articles. In 2010, Govindarajan's article "Stop The Innovation Wars" was recognized as one of the three best papers published by the Harvard Business Review, receiving the second place prize for that year's McKinsey Awards. His article "" won the McKinsey Award for the Best Article published in HBR in 2015. His article “” is an .  Govindarajan is the author of a blog featured by the Harvard Business Review where he discusses topics like reverse innovation and global business issues. He is also the author of a column on innovation that is published by BusinessWeek.

Big ideas

VG is known for two ideas, three-box solution and reverse innovation.
Three-box solution
In a nutshell, the three-box solution describes the framework for managing a business's responsibility to take action in three time horizons at once: executing the present core business at peak efficiency ; taking steps to avoid the inhibiting traps of past success ; and innovating a future built on breakthrough innovations. VG's research has elaborated on the distinctive skills each box requires, how the boxes interrelate, and what it takes to balance them.
Reverse innovation
Historically, corporations innovated in a rich country like the US and sold those products in a developing country like India. Reverse innovation is doing exactly the opposite. It is about innovating in a developing country like India and selling those products in a rich country like the US. VG's research has focused on questions like: What are the conditions in which reverse innovation presents a big opportunity? How to develop new products in poor countries? How to design the strategy and organization to execute reverse innovation?

Selected publications

Three-box solution
Reverse innovation