Tarun Khanna

Tarun Khanna

“A million mutinies now” was V.S. Naipaul’s 1990 description of the social upheaval then rocking India. “Lurking in that idea,” says Lemann professor Tarun Khanna, Ph.D. ’93, a native of New Delhi, “are a million entrepreneurial ventures, because an entrepreneur is somebody who is exercising productive mutiny against some status quo.” After earning his doctorate in a joint program offered by the economics department and Harvard Business School, which hired him the same year, Khanna staged a mutiny of his own: he shifted his emphasis from hard numbers to the delicate art of integrating Western business models into emerging markets. “I was becoming conscious of the desire to do something for my country of origin and in general for poor countries,” he says. But, as he realized in conversation with his former HBS colleague Yasheng Huang ’85, Ph.D. ’91, nations develop in wildly different ways. Their class on how China’s state-controlled growth differs from India’s democratic scramble for wealth became a 2003 Foreign Policy article. The provocative title (“Can India Overtake China?”) and answer (perhaps!) sparked heated reactions, he says: that it made “a huge amount of sense” or was “completely absurd.” Those who “were not observers of [India] found it surprising because it didn’t mesh with their image.” Today, Khanna sees the status quo changing at his children’s school, where students study China and listen to Indian music. At Harvard, he serves on the South Asia Initiative’s steering committee (see “Global Gains,” January-February, page 64), bringing Asia to the University even as he sends business ideas to his old home.

Click here for the November-December 2008 issue table of contents

You might also like

An Original Magna Carta, Hidden in Plain Sight

A rare original surfaces at Harvard at an “almost providential” moment. 

Radcliffe Institute Announces 2025-2026 Fellows

Scholars pursue projects ranging from reducing ethnic violence to searching for an undiscovered super-Earth.

Danielle Allen Debates Far-Right Blogger Curtis Yarvin

Popular monarchist debates Allen on democracy.

Most popular

This is How Universities Die

Higher ed thrived in Berlin and Beijing. Then government stepped in. 

Harvard President Responds to Secretary of Education

Alan Garber outlines steps the University has taken, and emphasizes compliance with the law.

The New Gender Gaps

What to do as men and boys fall behind

Explore More From Current Issue

Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams at the Peabody Essex Museum

South Korean artist’s socially themed photographs at the Peabody Essex Museum

Why Taxi Drivers Don’t Die of Alzheimer’s

Explaining taxi and ambulance drivers’ protection against Alzheimer’s disease.

Paper Peepshows at Harvard's Baker Library

How “paper peepshows” brought distant realms to life