Research Profile | Prof. Davinder Singh

Innovation and entrepreneurship can be difficult for many, especially large and evolved organisations. Coming from industry and being involved in many initiatives, Prof. Davinder Singh has been exploring how large corporations can leverage innovation to drive profitable growth? How can they also innovate like emerging and agile startups and new age entrepreneurs? How to deliver greater value in dynamic environment of constant change?

The increasing velocity of technological innovation is compelling more and more companies to breakthrough their boundaries and open the innovation efforts, create a networked innovation system, and consider appropriation through access instead of ownership. These are some of the areas that he makes an attempt to understand better through his research.

Prof. Davinder Singh has over 25 years of extensive industry experience, both with global companies (such as The Coca-Cola Co. and Foster’s International) and Indian companies (such as NDDB, Jagatjit Industries and CavinKare). He has held senior management roles across all these large corporations. His work has taken him beyond India, to central Asia and Africa, where he has led wide-ranging marketing initiatives and built the marketing capability of the brands he has worked with.

As the regional marketing manager for Coca-Cola India, his innovative marketing for the brand portfolio of The Coca-Cola Co. in north India resulted in the company gaining market leadership. As part of senior management, he had driven the transformation of the business models at Foster’s India and made them relevant to the market context. Under his stewardship as director, new product commercialization, Coca-Cola India, the innovation pipeline for the company was created with the ability to increase operating profits by over 10%.

Prof. Singh is currently assistant Dean—Strategy & Innovation with BMU university and teaches subjects like strategic management, bringing ideas to market, entrepreneurship and pricing revenue strategies. He enjoys engaging students and business executives on topics of marketing and innovation and considers innovation integral to marketing and business.

Prof. Singh graduated in physics from St. Stephens, Delhi University, followed by his post-graduation in Rural management from Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) and currently pursuing his Doctorate from MDI. He is also the founder of an Innovation consulting firm, TARU, which has been successfully engaging with business and helping them innovate for over a decade now.

Prof. Singh’s research work has been published in national and international journals extensively and also been published as full volumes such as “Research Focus and Methodologies for Understanding Innovation in Small-Medium Enterprises”, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Business Environment Perspectives, Vol. 4(2), pp.1662-68 in 2015; “Forbes Technosys Limited (A) & (B): Bill Payment Kiosk Business,” Ivey Publishing, 2-16; “Fieldfresh—Frozen Vegetable Business,” Ivey Publishing; and “Books for Change-Reorienting Business and Marketing Strategies,” Ivey Publishing.

His penchant for driving deep innovation across large scale corporations at the speed of a swift moving start-ups makes his work very engaging. He drives the same focus and passion towards creating new ideas with the students and drives them to develop the solutioning approach to problem solving. His extensive experience in moving large blocks with elephant like corporations helps defining the much-needed future culture and paradigm for break through growth and innovation which is critical for all businesses in current dynamic ecosystem where change is the only constant.