Xynteo, with Kantar-IMRB, conducted a study among 470 emerging Indian business leaders to understand ’Leading Out’: a new business leadership movement for a new kind of growth.
NEW DELHI: Recently, Xynteo released a report on emerging Indian business leaders. The report, titled ‘Leading Out’ explores the extent to which these leaders are aware and supportive of an approach where companies can profit from commercial opportunities that address societal and environmental challenges. It revealed that half (48%) of the emerging leaders place Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure among the top five priority issues for their business.
Launch at India 2022 Gathering
The launch took place at a gathering of India 2022 members (including Sanjiv Mehta, CEO and managing director, Hindustan Unilever and Banmali Agrawala, president and CEO, GE South Asia), a business-led coalition that has come together to leverage the power of collaboration to unlock a new kind of growth in India. Speaking at the launch, Xynteo CEO and Chairman, Dr. Osvald Bjelland noted, “We need to reinvent growth – for India and for the world. The scale and pace of India’s current growth model is placing enormous demands on its resources, institutions and society. It is the world’s biggest market and has an abundance of talent, knowledge, technology and capital. But as in the rest of the world, we, as business, too often we fail to invest these resources in a way that achieves the maximum long termhuman return. It is critical to reinvent our growth model to maximise this return.”
Leadership Behaviours and Commercial Return
The report seeks to understand the leadership behaviours that the next generation is exhibiting (Leading Out behaviours); and whether there is any relationship between these behaviours and their approach to the role of business in addressing societal and environmental challenges. The study assessed five particular behaviours and found that of the leaders who most fully embraced them, over half (55 per cent) report visible commercial return where their organisations have pursued this growth model of seeking commercial opportunity by addressing socio-environmental problems. These behaviours are:
Leading out in the open, Leading outside of influence, Leading out of one’s comfort zone, Leading through outward collaboration, Leading through modelling out
Businesses Adopting New Growth Models
The report also highlights that while most big businesses in India are successfully complying with the corporate social responsibility law, there are some that are profiting by adopting this new model of growth. Among emerging Indian business leaders who work in organisations that are using the SDGs as a commercial framework, three in five (58 per cent) are already reporting visible signs of commercial return.
Dr. Bjelland added, “The trend we are observing points to a new potential model. One where Indian businesses can build on the mandatory CSR spending platform to seek corporate social opportunity – to take a commercial position on socio-environmental problems.”
Research Methodology and Future Studies
The report is based on field work conducted by Kantar-IMRB between December 2016 and January 2017 across major cities in India. Xynteo will release conduct a similar study in Scandinavia and release cross-regional trends in late 2017.
Leading Out: A Global Movement
Leading Out is a global business leadership movement for a new kind of growth – one where business leaders are pursuing commercial opportunities that address societal and environmental problems.
India 2022: Driving Collaborative Growth
India 2022 is a business-led coalition that has come together to leverage the power of collaboration to unlock a new kind of growth in India. The India 2022 partners work together to translate India’s vision, as articulated by the Government of India’s development goals, into practical, commercial action. Its ambition is to build a tribe of leaders who share a commitment to pursuing commercial opportunity in addressing societal and environmental problems, create a shared agenda for growth around the role of business in advancing India’s development, incubate concrete pilot projects that realise the promise of India’s growth trajectory and support the development of a new cadre of Indian business leaders, by expanding and engaging the partner talent pool.
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