Tarun Khanna, Professor at Harvard Business School, speaks about the incredible change in aspirations among young people in India. Whereas in the past young people aspired to become government officials, today they aspire to become entrepreneurs and lift themselves out of poverty by their own actions. Khanna reflects that this change in attitudes is inspiring and very good for the country.
Tarun Khanna, Professor at Harvard Business School, summarizes insights from one of his books by comparing private and public rights in India and China. Khanna argues that in India, private rights are favored over the public interest whereas in China the opposite is true. These tradeoffs affect the nature of doing business in each country and development. Elsewhere in his presentation, Khanna also suggests that India and China differ in that India has weak hard infrastructure (roads, etc.) but strong soft infrastructure (human assets, etc.) whereas in China the opposite is true, a duality that is clearly related to the public and private rights distinction discussed in this video segment.
Tarun Khanna, Professor at Harvard Business School, highlights the ability of entrepreneurs to provide solutions to social problems by telling the story of a cardiac hospital in India. Khanna points out that the founder, a cardiac surgeon and entrepreneur, has been able to achieve incredible results unmatched by private or public institutions around the world by rethinking the scale on which healthcare is delivered. Khanna emphasizes that this kind of entrepreneurship can solve social problems in ways that often governments cannot.
Tarun Khanna, Professor at Harvard Business School, argues that the old equation that government = inefficient does not hold unilaterally but depends on the context. To illustrate, Khanna describes the evolution of the Communist Party of China and its efforts to co-opt entrepreneurs so that now the government and entrepreneurship is very closely integrated. In contrast, Khanna suggests that in India entrepreneurs keep their distance from the government.