What is reverse innovation?And why should it matter to strategic theorists?What furthermore are the practical applications and relevant instances of reverse innovation?These are the three important questions that Vijay Govindrajan and Chris Trimble of the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College take up in this engaging book.This is the third volume in a trilogy of books on the theory and practice of innovation that they have 'co-created' in the last few years with a specific focus on 'global strategy and innovation'.This book, incidentally, is dedicated to the late C. K. Prahalad -whom they endearingly refer to as a 'guiding light' -given his pioneering work in the area of strategic innovation.Govindrajan and Trimble situate their work as belonging to the 'strategy as innovation' school of thought, but reverse the direction of innovation: it flows surprisingly enough in their understanding from emerging markets to the West.This notion of 'reversals' is cognitively linked to the 'reversal of fortune' plot structure that Western writers are fond of and is not specific to strategic theory and practice.Larry Summers, for instance, is fond of delineating reversals in the flows of capital from emerging economies to the West not only in the wake of the economic crisis of 2008,but also because of the rising strategic importance of 'sovereign wealth funds' for re-capitalizing Western firms.Likewise, strategic product development, as Govindrajan and Trimble argue, is subject to a reversal in direction.
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