Book review of Billions of Entrepreneurs

Overview
As what it says on the book cover, Tarun Khanna discusses how China and India are reshaping their futures in Billions of Entrepreneurs.
In this book, author talked about most of difference and similarities but more focused on the China and India’s complementary strengths.
The author went over deep historic ties between China and India, including trade ties, and intellectual and cultural exchanges, and then talked about the “mutualism” situation for China and India. He pointed that both two countries have complementary strengths. one nation can provide what the other lacks.

Compared to ‘The Post-American World’
In Fareed Zakaria’s book, The Post-American World, he describes his view and vision of the world. He describes the post-American world not as the decline of America, but as the rise of “the rest”. Zakaria argues that China and India will soon rival the United States.
In ‘Billions of Entrepreneurs’, Tarun Khanna describes more detail about the companies which has high industry positions in China and India rather than simply heap praise after praise on both countries.

Main points of chapters
The whole book highlights a different realm, from medicine, to entertainment, to science and finance.
The writer began the book by illustrating the ways in which China and India are both alike and different. Then he went on to list a number of historical similarities including national unifications that happened around the same time and historically significant political changes in the middle of the 20th century. He explored the two political revolutions of both countries in that time: China’s 1949 Communist revolution and India’s 1947 independence and Nehru.
After he talked about the different attitudes of both governments for the foreign investors, the chapters started to focus on the on particular companies in each country and their strategies.
All the chapters express one main idea, one is that mutualism is the most reasonable approach for both countries, and collaborations among enterprises in China and India show encouraging signs of increasing mutualism.

Weakness
In Khanna’s book, some main idea is very clearly positioned early on in his book. He mentioned that “entrepreneurship in developing countries occurs in far more encompassing and far-reaching ways that in more developed settings.” But later on I did not see it very thoroughly developed in his book.
There are always some interesting perspectives in each chapter (such as what I mentioned above), but expiations for these perspectives are very limited and surface.

What I have learned?
From the book I have learned what these similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses, mean in the context of economics, trade, investment and development are.
Also this book helps me understand hard and soft power of both countries. China tries to secure regions of long-term resource interests. At the same time, India’s private sector has leveraged its success in its knowledge economy to gain global economic relevance.

What is fresh in the book?
The expiation about the positions of currency of both countries affects each other is a new view for me to see the relation between China and India.

My opinion for the relationship between in India and China
From what i have seen, the only reason I could see Chinese would conflict with Indian is the McMahon Line.(I and hemanth talked this before) It’s just a historic political problem. India and China has thousand years culture connection. China focus on manufacturing and India focus on IT, the main public opinion in China is that manufacturing may bring a lot of benefits now, but it doesn’t have a very good future, some high tech industry are what we need.
So, in the next 20 years, India could be a very sample to China, with the development of folk economy, the non-governmental cooperation will be more and more usual.
And for both governments, Pakistan is the key, now China is 80% on Pakistan side. Because of ideology problem, though things has changed a lot in China, for chinese government, the country like India which has strong power and is very very closed to west world, it could be and will be very good friend but also competitor.

Recommendation
"Billions of Entrepreneurs" is a book worth reading, it not just a book about entrepreneurship but rather about a broad range of cultural, social, historical and economic subjects involving and contrasting China and India.
Like many novels on bookstore shelves today, The Billions of Entrepreneurs targets the niche market for books about the glorious rise of modern East Asia.
For those unfamiliar with globalization or the economic boom in countries like China and India, The Billions of Entrepreneurs adequately details the most important events these two countries have encountered. The Billions of Entrepreneurs makes for interesting reading, but should not be taken as doctrine.

comments links

1. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2006/china/brics-2/
2. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2007/china/china-or-india-and-follow-up-questions/#comment-17732
3. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2007/china/leveraging-china-and-india/#comment-17733
4. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2007/china/china-and-india-the-power-of-two/#comment-17734
5. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2010/china/business-culture-in-india-and-china/#comment-17995
6. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2010/india/video-conference-with-indian-mba-students/#comment-17998
7. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2010/india/food-map-of-india/#comment-18012
8. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2008/china/china-and-india-nuclear-threats/#comment-18013
9. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2009/india/time-for-our-cricket-match/#comment-18014
10. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2009/china/the-purple-elephant-in-the-corner-nuclear-weapons-and-arms-sales/#comment-18015
11. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2009/china/soft-power-can-put-a-smile-on-your-face/#comment-18016
12. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2009/china/the-future-of-transportation-in-india-and-china/#comment-18017
13. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2008/india/cheap-cars-in-india-part-i-and-ii-by-mssrs-michael-and-tripp/#comment-18018
14. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2008/china/entrepreneurism-in-china-and-india/#comment-18019
15. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2008/china/youtube-videos-on-india/#comment-18020
16. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2007/china/globalization-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/#comment-18021
17. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2007/china/business-schools-forgetting-their-missions/#comment-18022
18. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2007/india/return-to-india-one-familys-journey-to-america-and-back/#comment-18023
19. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2008/india/india-also-full-of-contradictions/#comment-18024
20. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2008/china/moving-up-in-mumbai/#comment-18025
21. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2009/india/1000000-thumbs-up-to-slumdog-millionaire/#comment-18026
22. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2009/india/an-indian-heart-surgeons-quest-to-change-the-worlds-health-care/#comment-18027
23. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2009/india/whats-up-slumdog/#comment-18028
24. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2010/india/eat-in-bangalore/#comments
25. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2010/china/can-basketball-ever-overtake-cricket-as-indias-favorite-sport/#comments
26. http://calpolymbatrip.com/2010/china/how-does-a-recent-chinese-immigrant-and-comedian-see-us-maybe-more-clearly-than-we-see-ourselves/#comments

Business culture in India and China

China and India provide vast opportunities for trade and investments in all major sectors. In the next few decades, fueled by economic liberalization, China and India will join the U.S to become the three largest economies in the world. China and India will provide enormous upside potential for U.S. firms, as well as risks.

As a Chinese saying goes, “Know yourself and your competitors (partners), and you will never fail.” Understanding the business culture is very much the key to be successful in both countries.

Our cultures define our fundamental beliefs about how the world works and forms ways in which we interact and communicate with others and develop and maintain relationships. Doing business in a particular nation requires a focus on a multi-dimensional understanding of its culture and business practices. Understanding those differences and adapting to them is the key. The Indian economy has been booming for the past few years. The country holds great promise for the future.

The business culture of India is a reflection of the various norms and standards followed by its’ people. Indians have various cultural yardsticks, which extend to their business culture too. I have done some research regarding the business culture in India, and from my understanding, I found the following ones to be important:

1. The ‘namaste’ forms an important part of Indian etiquette and is generally used while greeting and saying good-bye. This gesture is akin to the act of genuflection in some countries and is performed by pressing the palms of both hands together (fingers up). The folded hands are placed below the chin and accompanied with a bow. However, educated Indian men and women, who are acquainted with western customs, prefer shaking hands. Moreover, while greeting any individual use his or her title (if he has any). To mark respect, you may also suffix ‘ji’ to the name of a person.

2. In India, companies follow a hierarchical system and the decision making is usually from the top to bottom. Business decisions could be at times time consuming, and International companies do show respect to this aspect. The lack of infrastructure and inadequate supply chain management can also act as bottleneck for foreign investment.

There are more useful details online, if you are interested, these websites can help you learn more about Indian business culture: Article 1 and Article 2.

Another interesting thing I found when I did the research for Indian business culture is the importance of building a good working relationship. Indians only deal favorably with those they know and trust, even at the expense of losing out on lucrative deals. It is vital that a good working relationship is founded with any prospective partner. This must take place on a business level, i.e. demonstrating strong business acumen, and at a personal level, i.e. relating to your partner and exhibiting the positive traits of trustworthiness and honor.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the People’s Republic of China also finds itself in the midst of social, economic, and cultural transition. The pursuit of profit is no longer ‘counter-revolutionary’ and business people have long since ceased being viewed as enemies of the people. “’It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice.’ ‘To get rich is glorious.’”

In China, relationship is everything in the business world. Chinese business contacts are mostly referrals; essentially a business relationship is struck based on another business associate’s recommendation. The best prices and deals often come through a strong recommendation. However, cold calls and direct contacts are common today, given the availability of the internet and the competitive nature of Chinese businesses. You may source from the internet, trade fairs, catalogues, brochures, and advertisements, and approach the Chinese companies directly through a call or email.

Chinese business relationship inevitably becomes a social relationship after a while. Unlike Western business relationship which remains professional and perhaps, aloof even, after some time, Chinese business relationship becomes a social one.

The more you share your personal life, including family, hobbies, political views, aspirations, the closer you are in your business relationship. Sometimes, a lot of time is spent discussing matters outside of business, but then a lot of time, the other party is also making up their mind about your deal based on their assessment of the personal relationship you have, with them.

Reference: http://www.worldbusinessculture.com/Business-in-China.html

http://www.tradechakra.com/business-culture-india.html

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/etiquette/doing-business-india.html