Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Recognising the strategic acumen of corporates in India

Dear Colleagues,

With great pleasure I would like to share an update of Porter Prize 2014 event that was held on September 26, 2014 at Radisson Blu Plaza, Mahipalpur, Delhi. It was an exciting gathering of eminent people from intelligentsia, civil society, business and media etc. The most pertinent thing about the gathering was sharing of ideas and the platform that reflects cutting edge perspectives, powerful reflection and implementable ideas.

The event initiated at 04:30 PM with thought provoking panels on Economics, Social Progress & Creating Shared Value and Strategy & Competitive Advantage. We also had keynotes from Professor Michael E. Porter, Sanjiv Mehta, Sashi Ruia and Etienne Benet. The day culminated with a celebration of strategic acumen of Indian coporates through the Porter Prize ceremony wherein Deborah Wince Smith (President and CEO, US Council on Competitiveness) presented the citation to the enterprises recognised.

It is time to celebrate the enterprises and strive to emulate the best practices that they reflect so as to take India forward and make it a competitive nation.

I would like to personally thank all the enterprises that participated in the initiative, partners and the other stakeholders involved.

We look forward to continuing the legacy of the awards in the coming years and make it a success in future. Process for the next awards scheduled to take place in September 2015 will start from April 2015 with nominations.

For more information about the awards you can look at www.porterprize.in or write to me atamit.kapoor@competitiveness.in

Look forward to your continuing support.

Regards,

Amit Kapoor
Honorary Chairman
Institute for Competitiveness, India

Keynote by Professor Michael E. Porter

Professor Porter congratulated everyone on participating in the incredible process. He shared his passion for competitiveness and its practice. Very significantly, he asserted the hitherto thought agendas of economic strategy & social progress as separate pursuits actually needed an integrated approach. This he further said was not a balancing exercise between two conflicting either or agendas but a blend was mandated. Apart from sharing the macro and micro elements of his competitiveness framework, he exhorted Indian corporate to carry a deeper sole search as to how it would impact the society and economy. It was interesting to hear him say philanthropy was important but not very important because business serves society better by creating better products, sourcing raw material efficiently and generating useful infrastructure. He even said countries which are self-critical have better leverage their natural endowments. He underlined the role of successful clusters and emphasized that creating jobs with low wages was not adequate.

Professor Michael Porter's Presentation

Winners of Porter Prize 2014

Porter Prize for Creating Shared Value: Hindustan Unilever

For their outstanding performance in the industry and to recognize their high impact as an organization that created economic success by redefining markets, products, way of doing business, creating collaborative efforts and in turn creating societal and economic progress.

Porter Prize for Exploiting Trade Offs: Tech Mahindra

For their outstanding performance in the industry and to recognize  the choices that made their strategy sustainable as they were not easy to match or neutralize due to which they were able to create barriers pertaining to emulation.

Porter Prize for Creating Distinctive Value: Dow India

For their outstanding performance in the industry and ability to offer unique solutions to the customers. They effectively created new market spaces, segments and provided solutions that redefined the market.

Porter Prize for Value Based Healthcare: Fortis Healthcare

For their outstanding performance in the industry and to recognize them for redefining the idea of patient care and fundamentally challenging the economic models within the industry.

Porter Prize for Enabling Social Progress: Essar Foundation

For their outstanding contribution to the society to meet the basic human needs, established blocks that allow communities to sustain quality of life and creating conditions for individuals to reach their potential.

Porter Prize for Excellence in Corporate Integration and Governance: Max India

For their outstanding performance that is driven through excellence in corporate integration, exploiting synergies between different divisions, superior board room performance and governance mechanisms.

Porter Prize for Leveraging Unique Activities: Mahindra Logistics

For their outstanding performance in the industry and to recognize their effective rendering of activities across the value chain that created competitive advantage. They clearly stated that good strategies depend on the connection among many things and on making interdependent choices.

Porter Prize for Leveraging Unique Activities: Siemens

Porter Prize for Industry Architectural Shift: Indigo Airlines

For their outstanding performance in the industry and to recognize them for redefining the industry structure by challenging the very basis of competition, creating new business models, challenging the status quo and exploiting change.

Keynotes Delivered

Shashi Ruia, Chairman, Essar Group in his keynote said, “I strongly believe that manufacturing is the backbone of a strong economy. To fulfill the dream of India being a manufacturing hub or a force we need skilled labour and additionally without a doubt the world tomorrow would be driven by confluence of economic and social objectives.

Etienne Benet, CEO, Nestle India Limited emphasized on the role that Nestle plays in the industry and said, “Nestle is clearly driven by the idea of creating shared value.”

Resonating the views of Professor Porter, Sanjiv Mehtasaid that the idea is to find the confluence between economic and social objectives. Business clearly can be a force of good. A responsible form of capitalism will depend on leaders we have. The leaders would have the responsibility to build a sustainable business model and we shall have to dramatically change the way we distribute wealth and use our resources.