From 2018-19, R. Gopalakrishnan collaborated with five academics from SPJIMR, Mumbai on a research project that led to writing six books about as many of India’s Gen-Liberalization Business Institutions.

The question they asked was: What does it take to convert an Indian company into an institution?

The project, much like an archaeological excavation, meant digging through records to appreciate what makes companies respected institutions. After forming a hypothesis and pilot validation, they arrived at a 3*5 matrix of capabilities that shapers of institutions appear to practice.

The six companies they finally wrote about were HDFC Group, TCS, Kotak Bank, L&T, Biocon, and Marico. Bases on research and interviews, a slim book of 160 pages on each company was published for the series called “Shapers of Business Institutions.”

Note, the team did not study centenarians like Tata, Bajaj, Godrej and Levers, but sought out only Gen-L institutions where they were able to interview the living shapers - companies which came into prominence around liberalization period.

R. Gopalakrishnan devoted over 3 years and over 700 hours of collective research, writing and editing - all, of course, shared with his co-authors. This may well be the first applied research on excellent companies in an Indian context - there are, ofcourse several American books like In Search of Excellence, Good to Great etc. set in a foreign context.

In this guest blog for IiAS, R. Gopalakrishnan shares his findings about these Indian business institution-builders.

You can read the guest blog and book extract ‘What does it take to convert an Indian company into an institution?’ by clicking here

Wish you all a very happy Diwali.