Industry Intelligence Platforms

India is a special place to develop business. The rules of the game are “slightly” different to European markets as the enforcement of legal contract is often difficult to achieve. Successful business development therefore often depends on mutual trust.
However, trust in India is different to how it is normally understood in Central Europe. In short, Swiss managers can have a high level of confidentiality to engage into joint investments (in JVs or Buyer-Supplier relationships etc.) if they can be sure that both parties (Swiss and Indian partner) can “hurt” each other significantly due to overlapping personal or professional networks at an early stage and increasing joint economic investments at a latter stage. The neutral platforms of the involved business schools and the regular meetings of the same senior executives in the scenario and strategy development workshops provides an ideal environment to create overlapping personal and professional networks so that no involved party has in interested to “ruin” his/her reputation for a few more Rupees in a business deal.
The events in India are either specialized scenario development workshops on IIM Bangalore or Udaipur campus and by invitation only (except for Industry Intelligence Platform members that receive automatically an invitation) or address more general industry-related topics and attract a larger audience including media. There are on average two specialized scenario and strategy development workshops per industry segment per annum.
The scenario and strategy development workshops are for senior executives only and strongly support the personal relationships building among key decision makers in the industry. These events blend optimally informal knowledge exchange, systematic knowledge creation and the opportunity to regularly meet the same senior executives over time again and support the build up of mutual networks.