Search results

Is the rise of the Indian software industry simply another Asian state-dominated industrial growth story or is India distinctive, an economy where small technology entrepreneurs also find niches for development and can be drivers of innovation? Research has focused on the large integrated Indian and international service providers. This study examines the opportunity for growth among smaller innovative technology entrepreneurial firms. Two areas of inquiry are: What factors have been responsible for spurring growth in the Indian IT industry? What type of work is being carried out at Indian firms and is this profile changing? This paper aims to examine the emergence of technology entrepreneurs, particularly in terms of their links to multinational firms and their role and position in global value chains. The paper takes a multi-level approach to understanding development trajectories in the IT sector in India: a global value chain approach to the extent that company processes are seen in their larger networked context across organizations and an institutional approach in terms of state policies that influence the creation of infrastructure that, in turn, shapes organizational development trajectories. Additionally, it examines the role of the various actors within IT sector organizations – the workers, the managers and, in the case of the small companies in our sample, the owners – on the outcome of growth trajectories in the Indian IT sector. We find that the various levels of change and policy all contribute to the outcome in company trajectories: the dominance of multinational enterprises on the market, the entrepreneurial vision and survival strategies of returned technology expatriates, and the changing policies of the government in promoting indigenous business.

Qualitative research interviews; comparative case study; literature review; multi-tier analysis.

The technology entrepreneurial development in India appears to represent quite a distinctive path in terms of both firm development and broader economic development. It is focused on the IT sector, in which high skill “knowledge work” is carried out and which has been able to develop despite lack of basic infrastructure (roads and reliable electricity).

After the opening up of the business environment to large Western multinational enterprises (MNEs), it was difficult for indigenous Indian entrepreneurs to compete in innovative product development markets. Developing such companies depended on individual risk taking, as no specific infrastructure existed for niche production. However, the knowledge base and innovation clusters did offer opportunities for obtaining contracts. The Indian entrepreneurs did have to make a lot of compromises about defining their business and the tasks they could undertake. More research is needed on the paths and development opportunities for these smaller Indian-owned firms.

Unique opportunities are emergent and defy easy policy prescriptions, other than precluding change that does not foreclose emergent possibilities (e.g. such as strong state controlled business development).

Indian-owned innovative companies, although having difficulties competing with large Indian and Western MNEs, do put pressure on these MNEs to move work up the value chain, thereby providing more interesting and challenging opportunities for Indian knowledge workers.

This paper provides a unique company-level perspective about entrepreneurialism in the Indian software sector from the perspective of different actors in the process. It then links this company-level perspective to a larger context both in terms of trajectories of development at the macro level, as well as the role that the company’s place in multinational value chains has in its development perspectives. It gives a special insight into the motivations and obstacles facing entrepreneurs in India’s dynamic software sector.

This paper seeks to explore the processes by which the offshoring of technology development to India and China by Western and Japanese multinationals has evolved from the localization/simplification of technology for local markets to the development of advanced technology in India and China for global markets.

Case studies were developed based on 190 interviews conducted in China, India and several other countries. Respondents included multinational home country and offshore managers, as well as local entrepreneurs.

Rather than following carefully thought out corporate strategies, the offshoring of technology development by multinationals is more often incremental and driven by the ambitions and expectations of Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs and managers. Meanwhile “technology competition” policies proposed in the USA and elsewhere are not taking sufficient account of the processes by which technology development is being offshored.

Techno‐nationalistic policies designed to allow one country to win a race with others in developing and monopolizing new technologies are increasingly dysfunctional. The identification of multinationals with “home countries” continues to weaken. At the same time, technologies and technology workers are more mobile than ever before. Better policies would allow nations to seek mutual benefit through today's more globally dispersed technology development capabilities. Multinational managers in our study were not sufficiently accounting for the costs of offshoring and outsourcing technology, nor were they giving much thought to the longer term implications of their diminishing capabilities to develop or even control the development technology. More thought should be given to what aspects of technology constitute “core competencies” and which provide sustainable competitive advantage in the emerging global environment.