— Overview
The notes keep the book’s three axes — strategy, global organization, and the project — and treat reverse innovation as a path that can travel back to rich markets.
— Contents and key concepts
Not cheap sales, but reverse innovation
The notes take up Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble’s Reverse Innovation and begin with a trap: global firms that thought it was enough to sell cheaply in emerging markets, and failed. Export alone, they write, is not enough.
What is needed is reverse innovation: work begun in an emerging market, then carried into other developing countries, into non-mainstream markets in rich countries, and into the mainstream there. The current, in this reading, can run backward.
Strategy, a global organization, and a local team
They arrange the book along three axes: strategy, the global organization, and the project. People, authority, and money should move toward emerging countries with growth potential, and the firm should build a reverse-innovation mindset — by postings, concentrated work, events in those markets, unusual outside directors, and visible CEO attention.
To catch the opportunity, they write, one forms a local growth team with a full set of business capabilities, a team that should act like a new company, yet reach the firm’s global resources through carefully managed partnerships.
A mouse in China, an ECG in India
The notes keep two cases: Logitech’s return to the mouse market in China, and GE Healthcare’s development of an electrocardiograph in India. They also advise watching small, fast-growing firms based in emerging countries, which may later threaten global companies.
They leave the subject there, before later slides of implications. The same Korean report, written out more fully, sits on CampusDown.
Sources
- Student notes on Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble’s Reverse Innovation.
Last updated 15 November 2026
Frequently asked questions
What mistake do the notes say global firms make in emerging markets?
Thinking it is enough to sell cheaply, or simply to export. Growth, they write, requires reverse innovation: work begun in an emerging market, then spread to other developing countries and into rich-country markets, mainstream and not.
What organizational move do they record?
Shift people, authority, and money toward emerging countries with growth potential; build a reverse-innovation mindset; and form a local growth team (LGT) that acts like a new company, with carefully managed access to global resources.
Which cases do they keep?
Logitech’s return to the China mouse market, and GE Healthcare’s development of an electrocardiograph in India. They also note a watch on fast-growing emerging firms that may later threaten global companies.
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