Vijay Govindarajan Receives 2017 Global Strategy Journal Best Paper Award

A leading expert on strategy and innovation, Govindarajan pioneered the concept of reverse innovation.

The 2011 paper explores cases in which innovations are adopted first in emerging economies and “trickle up” to rich countries. In their abstract, Govindarajan and Ramamurti note that although examples of reverse innovation are still rare, they “raise interesting theoretical questions, such as what kinds of innovation emerging economies are likely to spawn why such innovations might diffuse to rich countries, what competitive advantages local and foreign firms enjoy in this process, and how it affects the global strategy and organization of established multinational enterprises.”

Govindarajan, who is also a Harvard Innovation Lab Fellow at Harvard Business School, pioneered the concept of reverse innovation in a 2009 Harvard Business Review article he co-authored with General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt D’78, “How GE Is Disrupting Itself.” Govindarajan’s HBR article on “Engineering Reverse Innovations” with MIT mechanical engineering professor Amos Winter won HBR’s Best Article Award last year.

“If the award creates more interest among academics to pursue further research on reverse innovation, I will be thrilled,” says Govindarajan.

The recipients will share a prize of $5,000 and receive a plaque in recognition of the award to be presented at the 37th SMS Annual Conference in Houston, Texas, in October.

This is the inaugural Best Paper Award for the Global Strategy Journal, which will be given annually to honor substantial work published five or more years prior to the citation.