Build to last

In the second part of a series, the author notes down some lessons for start-ups

Philosopher Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific breakthroughs happen when a researcher observes the world well enough to identify and explain an anomaly. The discovery of an anomaly, a surprise, gives scientists the opportunity to revisit a theory to better understand it. This often leads to a modification or improvement of the theory by understanding and explaining the anomaly.

In the first part of this series (March 11), I explained our initial hypothesis that eight attributes of Mindset-behavior-action assemble into a grid pattern; the first three are essential, while the other five are very valuable. Our method of validation and confirmation has been explained in the trilogy of books under the Shapers of Business Institutions series. Like we instill certain things from childhood, startups must consider doing the right things from the beginning.

■ The first essential is ‘People relations.’ This refers to the shapers’ obsession to engage with people, constantly nurturing their skills/expertise. Shapers tend to accord this higher priority than business planning. For example, as described in one book, Anil Naik’s seven step leadership process.

■ ‘Short-term and long-term’ refers to a counter-intuitive mindset — to spend clock time to robustly solve short-term problems, without reducing the emotional time to think through long-term issues. (A mother, who raises her child, exemplifies this ability.) Kiran Mazumdar-shaw maintained a laser-sharp focus on solid state fermentation, while thinking through the benefits of an alternative technology for a biopharma entry by the firm.

■ ‘Critical thinking’ refers to the ability to generate new options in decision-making: the obvious ones strike most managers anyway. For example, TCS’S creation of software tools to automate software development to exploit the explosive Y2K opportunity.

In this second article, I explore lessons from our book titled, How Kiran Mazumdar-shaw fermented Biocon, co-authored with Dr Sushmita Srivastava.

Biocon is interesting because it has been founded and nurtured by a woman entrepreneur in the biotech field that tends to be dominated by males—at least when she entered the fermentation industry i n 1978. Imagine a Gujarati-origin, Kannada-speaking, Australian-trained female brew master, who sought a job back in India. Her Australian classmate recommended her name as a possible Indian entrepreneur-partner for an upcoming Irish fermentation company called Biocon. She meets the company with a raw dream, but understandable skepticism. That is why Kiran calls herself an accidental entrepreneur—perhaps all entrepreneurs are accidental.

My co-author and I had to be careful to avoid the trap of colonial-era historians, whose preoccupation is with the ‘character’ of the subject — and the character becomes dominant in the narrative. We reminded each other to focus on the institution rather than the subject. The MBA grid as explained previously greatly helped to view the institution objectively.

More on www.business-standard.com The writer is a distinguished professor of IIT Kharagpur. He was a director of Tata Sons and a vice-chairman of Hindustan Unilever (Three co-authored books in a series called ‘Shapers of Business Institutions’ — on TCS, Biocon and L&T — have just been published by Rupa