Centre for India & Global Business

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The Centre for India & Global Business (Cambridge India Centre)
Cambridge, UK
TypeResearch Centre
EstablishedMarch 2009
Director Jaideep Prabhu & Marvin Fernandes
Location
52°12′01″N0°07′17″E / 52.200224°N 0.121461°E / 52.200224; 0.121461
Website www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/india-global-business/

The Centre for India & Global Business (CIGB, or Cambridge India Centre) is a research centre that was launched in March 2009 as part of the Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, England, to support the university's growing engagement with India. [1]

Contents

History

The founding academic director of the Cambridge India Centre is Professor Jaideep Prabhu, the first Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise at the University of Cambridge, who took up the post in September 2008. [2] The founding executive director of the India Centre was Navi Radjou, who served between January 2009 and June 2011. The Center has other academic members including Cambridge Judge Business School faculty and PhD students.

Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the then President of India, delivered the inaugural lecture at the Cambridge India Centre in 2009. [3]

The India Centre is currently led by co-directors, Jaideep Prabhu and Marvin Fernández.

Research activities

The Cambridge India Centre's current research focuses on three primary areas:

1) Jugaad innovation: How can India's talent for jugaad—frugal, flexible, and inclusive innovation — be scaled up and done systematically across the board to develop and deliver radically affordable solutions in health, education, energy, agriculture, and finance.

2) Digital public goods and government innovation: How and why are firms and other Indian organizations leveraging digital public goods (India Stack) to create innovative products, services, and business models at a population scale? How can the success of digital public goods in India be replicated across the world?

3) Sustainability innovation: How and why can global innovations in climate change, natural resources, intergenerational equity, and the broader ESG segment be adapted for India and then "round-tripped" to the rest of the world (and vice-versa)?

Outreach and networks

The Cambridge India Centre also hosts conferences and seminars that bring together academics, corporate leaders, and policy-makers from all over the world to discuss and disseminate the latest research findings as well as policy and industry best practices. These events are hosted both in Cambridge as well as in major Indian cities. For instance, in March 2009, Professor Jaideep Prabhu, director of CIGB, delivered his inaugural lecture in New Delhi, which was chaired by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Indian Planning Commission. In May 2009, CIGB hosted in Cambridge a major conference titled “Innovation in India and China: How to Create Value from Emerging Markets,” which explored the rise of India and China as both fast-growing global markets and world-class sources of innovation. [4] [5] In 2023, the India Centre supported the inaugural Cambridge India Conference organised by the students of the Judge Business School.

Since its inception, the Cambridge India Centre has also hosted a number of speakers, including Nandan Nilekani, former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), architect of India's digital public infrastructure, and former chairman of Infosys Technologies (April 2009); former Indian president Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (June 2009); [6] Ravi Kant, vice chairman of Tata Motors; and Dr Ramesh Mashelkar, former director general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. [7]

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References

  1. Cambridge-India Partnership.
  2. Appointment of the first Jawaharlal Nehru Professor at Cambridge Archived 2009-10-13 at the Wayback Machine , press release from Cambridge University
  3. President APJ Kalam delivering the inaugural lecture at the Cambridge India Centre
  4. "Latest news". University of Cambridge. Archived from the original on 21 June 2009. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
  5. Proceedings from the “Innovation in India and China” conference Archived 2010-01-04 at the Wayback Machine , CIGB website.
  6. Cambridge-India Partnership, Cambridge-India Activity, September 2008 onwards, University of Cambridge Creative Leadership in the Global Knowledge Economy Archived 2009-09-25 at the Wayback Machine , Dr Abdul Kalam’s lecture at Judge Business School, 9 June 2009.
  7. Visit of Dr R.A. Mashelkar to Cambridge Archived 2011-01-06 at the Wayback Machine , CIGB website.