|
|
 Email |  Discuss | Get latest news on your desktop
Ratan Tata's words of inspiration
August 26, 2008
On innovation: My outlook on R&D is that it is an absolutely necessary thing for us to do. And I don't think we are doing enough. The point is not just spending money; it's how many patents you file, your innovation rate and your product development. . . If today you were to give everybody a mandate that they can spend 3 per cent of their revenue on R&D, assuming they can spare the money, I don't think many companies would know the what, where and how of spending that kind of money, other than to put up an R&D place and buy lots of equipment.
On customer relationship: Where we have direct dealings with our customers, it is important that, at the middle-management levels, they are shown courtesy, dealt with fairly, and made to feel that they are receiving the attention they deserve. The interface with the customer should be a seamless one.
On risk: There have been occasions where I have been a risk-taker. Perhaps more than some, and less so than certain others. It is a question of where you view that from. I have never been a real gambler in the sense, that some successful businessmen have been. . .
On ethics: What worries me is that the threshold of acceptability or the line between acceptability and non-acceptability in terms of values, business ethics, etc, is blurring.
On success: I would not consider myself to have been tremendously successful or as having failed tremendously. I would say I have been moderately successful because there have been changes.
On survival: The strong live and the weak die. There is some bloodshed, and out of it emerges a much leaner industry, which tends to survive.
On Tata Group: At Tatas, we believe that if we are not among the top three in an industry, we should look seriously at what it would take to become one of the top three players -- or think about exiting the industry.
On Tata Group: We were a group that would not work in a particular way for many years and we weren't fully sensitive to the changing environment around us. So anything that was new, we felt it was better to be where we were, tested and tried, I think, that's changed.
Image: Ratan Tata stands beside a US made F-18 aircraft before flying it at the Air Force Station, Yelahanka, in Bangalore in February 2007. | Photograph: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images
Also read:
World's 10 biggest malls
|
|
|
Advertisement
