Tarun Khanna

Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna seeks to integrate Western business models into emerging markets.

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.

You might also like

At Harvard, Mike Pence Discusses Democracy and Conservatism

The former vice president denounces political violence, expresses hope for a deal between Trump and the University.

Is the Constitution Broken?

Harvard legal scholars debate the state of our founding national document.

Harvard Panel Debunks the Population Implosion Myth

Public health professors parse the evidence surrounding falling U.S. birth rates.

Most popular

What Trump Means for John Roberts’s Legacy

Executive power is on the docket at the Supreme Court.

“AI Anxiety”

The Undergraduate on the uneasy collision of technology and writing

How Maga Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Explore More From Current Issue

People sit in lawn chairs near a rustic barn at Cider Garden in New Salem on a sunny day.

Ciderdays Festival Celebrates All Things Apple

Visiting small-batch cideries and orchards in Massachusetts

Colorful illustration of woman multitasking with laptop, baby bottle, toy, and checklist.

Motherhood and Ambition In a Pronatalist World

Gen Z is confronting the age-old question of balance—with a new twist.

Renaissance portrait of young man thought to be Christoper Marlowe with light beard, wearing ornate black coat with gold buttons and red patterns.

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.