Indian Business Cultivates "Reverse Innovation"

On a recent tour of Asia, GE’s chairman Jeffrey Immelt noted a concept he labels “reverse innovation”, the incubation of new multinationals outside the developed world, who focus not on distributing developed world products into the Third World, but who instead focus on creating products designed for Third World people.

This time, Indian engineers are reinventing products to cut costs and reach the billions of people world-wide who live on less than $2 a day. via Wall Street Journal

This trend reminds us of new thinking in agricultural production in Africa and elsewhere, with its emphasis on small-scale farming.

The paradigm of assuming that Western products and ideas always represent the needs and aspirations of poor people is changing, and opening an opportunity for “reverse innovation’. In this case, the developed world adapts comparatively inexpensive technologies, products and services in agriculture, health care and a diverse portfolio of consumer needs to the needs of Americans and other first-world consumers. Read Indian Firms Shift Focus to the Poor via WSJ