Intuition and Innovation
As customers spread out across geographies and cultures, the solutions that businesses develop for addressing their needs, need to be scalable as well as customized for each particular segment. To address the dichotomy of scale and customization, leaders need to fine tune their intuition and develop a keen sense of understanding, not just of present customer needs but crucially, in a world with a high degree of technological obsolescence, future customer needs and trends. This session will look at understanding how intuition can feed innovation.
List of Speakers
Moderator: Prof. Rajeev Srinivasan – Director, Asian School of Business – Trivandrum
Professor Rajeev Srinivasan is an expert in innovation and corporate strategy. He spent many years in the US, with such firms as Bell Labs, Sun Microsystems and Siemens, creating and marketing innovative new products. He was later responsible for introducing the Java programming language to India. After working with several startup firms, he has been teaching innovation at IIM Bangalore, Kozhikode and Ahmedabad for several years, and he is currently director of the Asian School of Business, Trivandrum. He has also been a columnist for Rediff.com and others for almost twenty years. Professor Rajeev was educated at IIT Madras and the Stanford Business School.
Harish Bhat
CEO and Managing Director of Tata Global Beverages Limited
Mr. Harish Bhat has a long and illustrious tenure of over 25 years with the Tata group managing various functions in Tata Global Beverages, Tata Teleservices among others. He also serves as Additional Director of Tata Coffee Ltd.He is also known to be a prolific writer for various publications, including being a regular columnist for Business Line and Brand Line on brands and marketing strategy.
Kishore Biyani
Founder and Group CEO, Future Group and Managing Director of Pantaloon Retail (India) Limited
Considered a pioneer of modern retail in India, Mr. Biyani’s leadership has led the group’s transformation into India’s leading player in the consumption sector building brands like Pantaloons, Big Bazaar among others. Regularly ranked among India’s most admired CEOs and recipient of multiple awards, Mr. Biyani is the author of the best-selling book ‘It Happened in India’ that captures his entrepreneurial journey and the growth of modern retailing in India.
Meena Ganesh
CEO and MD of Pearson Education Services
Under her leadership, the company has made a successful foray into the school management space and emerged as the fastest growing school chain in India. Prior to this, she was the CEO of Tesco’s operations in India, the Tesco Hindustan Service Center and was also on the Global Retail Council of Tesco, an elite group of about 50 people who run the operations of Tesco worldwide.
Namal Rajapakse
Member of Parliament, Govt. of Sri Lanka
He is a lawyer and politician and hails from an active political family. He has travelled around the world extensively and participated in many youth-related events by spearheading the Tharunyata Hetak (Aspiring Youth) programme. He has led a number of social initiatives including infrastructure development in North and East Sri Lanka, helped raise funds for an army hospital and handicrafts development.
