NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, December 8, 2017

Harvard Business School’s exploration of the evolution of business leadership in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has reached an important milestone. This month the Creating Emerging Markets project will publish interviews 100 and 101 with emerging market business leaders. They are Mo Ibrahim, founder of Celtel, which when sold had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers across Africa, and Ela Bhatt, Indian activist and founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association of India.

The interviews, many on video, are intended to help researchers, students, and all others interested in better understanding the factors that govern business growth in emerging markets. Leaders interviewed in 20 countries include Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder and chair, of Bangladesh’s BRAC microfinance company; Rosario Bazan, founder and CEO of Peru’s Danper Trujillo; Ratan Tata, chair of Tata Trust; Shabana Azmi, famous actress and political activist; Shinta Kamdani, CEO of Indonesia’s Sintesa Group; andDr. Manu Chandaria, chair and CEO of the Kenyan-based steel and aluminum group Comcraft.

For perspectives on what has been learned so far, HBS Working Knowledge conducted an email interview with four of the key drivers of CEM: Project coordinators Geoffrey Jones, Isidor Straus Professor of Business History; and Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor;  Erica Salvaj, Alfred D. Chandler Fellow in Business History; and doctoral student Cheng Gao.

Photo courtesy of David Weekly.