Managements world over have been plagued by a disease called incrementalism and satisfactory under-performance. Organisations are thus always thinking about incremental growth and are happy to look at enhanced market share, improved customer satisfaction, higher IRR, ROI etc., based on previous years performance. This approach has been practised many a time fairly successfully especially in countries like India, working in closed economies. The driving force in these economies has come from a comfortable ROI, obliviated from the fact of competitive inadequacy in terms of global competition. Paradoxically this success contains the seeds of its own destruction.

Decade by decade, thinkers have suggested various tools and techniques to improve the business performance. In the recent times Core competence, Reengineering, TQM, empowerment of teams and the like has been thought of as the panacea. Over the years it has become apparent that many new tools and techniques got delegated to fad dustbin by organisations, barring a few who made them work.

Per se, conceptually, the tools and techniques are excellent. The critical question is that do they work by themselves? The answer is decidedly no — successful application is directly relatable to organisation culture, which is nothing but the collective operative mind-sets and calibre of the individuals in the organisation. Human capital development is thus at the apex of any change process.

The essence and quality of such development is steeped deep into the roots of one’s value system, which is a natural evolution from the socio-cultural fabric of a nation. No organisation can thus grow by imitating others but has to develop and follow its own national and organisational culture.

Optimising performance has been the major concern of business enterprises everywhere. At the organizational level, our operational processes, systems & equipments have undergone a metamorphosis. Ironically the management thought paradigm of which we are still proud of is about 2500 years old.

· With increased integration of world economies, can we still live with this incrementalistic approach?

· Do we not need to redefine our thoughts, our parameters, our philosophies, management structures, strategic intents, definition of competitive advantage, value chains, human resource, etc.?

Given the current scenario, can business community in India take radical steps to be a world class economy? If so, how?

We thus now need to brainstorm on ways to redefine management.

Redefine what and why?

Redefine why and how?

Redefine how and now?

And ultimately - now and in India?