Dr. Tarun Khanna from Harvard Business School to Keynote at the Conference

We are glad to announce that Dr. Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School, will be a keynote speaker at the NetIP Conference on Saturday, 30th August.
Dr. Khanna works with entrepreneurs, companies and NGOs in emerging markets worldwide. In 2007, he was elected a Young Global Leader (under 40) by the World Economic Forum.

Dr. Khanna has served as course head of the required Strategy course in the Harvard MBA program, and chaired the executive education program on Strategy, Leadership & Governance. Currently, he teaches in Harvard’s comprehensive general management executive education programs. His current research focuses on understanding the drivers of entrepreneurship worldwide. As part of the Emerging Giants project, he seeks to understand how to build world-class companies from emerging markets worldwide.

Professor Khanna’s work has been profiled in news-magazines around the world, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and newspapers in China, India, and elsewhere in Asia and Latin America. He has been a frequent commentator on ‘Competing in, and from, China and India’ and ‘Building the Developing country Multinational’ on several TV and radio programs recently (NPR, BBC, CNN, CNBC, Voice of America, Bloomberg and local channels).

In his recently published book Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours, Professor Khanna explores the likely evolution of the Chinese and Indian models and the implications for the world.

China, India, and Your Future

China and India are home to one-third of the world's population. And they're undergoing social and economic revolutions that are capturing the best minds and money of Western business. In Billions of Entrepreneurs, Tarun Khanna examines the entrepreneurial forces driving China's and India's trajectories of development. He shows where these trajectories overlap and complement one another--and where they diverge and compete. He also reveals how Western companies can participate in this development.

Through intriguing comparisons, the author probes important differences between China and India in areas such as information and transparency, the roles of capital markets and talent, public and private property rights, social constraints on market forces, attitudes toward expatriates abroad and foreigners at home, entrepreneurial and corporate opportunities, and the importance of urban and rural communities. He explains how these differences will influence China's and India's future development, what the two countries can learn from each other, and how they will ultimately reshape business, politics, and society in the world around them.

Engaging and incisive, this book is a critical resource for anyone working in China or India or planning to do business in these two countries.

Seeking help with Sponsors for the Conference

Our conference team is busy planning various aspects of the conference from content to marketing to logistics. Moreover, our Finance and Sponsorship teams are working very hard to keep the costs low (including the registration prices) and secure sponsors to offset many expenses...

The NetIP conference which attracts over 850 attendees from across the US and Canada, provides many benefits for sponsors, big or small. Be it corporate branding and visibility, diversity initiatives and outreach, or talent acquisition, our member demography is an ideal target that Corporations can tap into. While our sponsorship packet (email us to get it) lists several packages, we are more than happy to create customized packages based on the needs of the sponsor. We are committed to delivering the best value to companies for their sponsorship dollars.

In this endeavor, we seek your help in bringing more sponsors to the 2008 NetIP Conference. If you know potential sponsors or if you are a potential sponsor yourself please contact Swarupa Purandare, Sponsorship Chair or Sundip Arora, Conference Co-Chair at sponsorship@netipconference.org

There are quite a few incentives for you to help us with sponsorship. Contact us to discuss more.

Announcing Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande as Keynote Speaker

We are glad to announce that Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande will be our opening keynote speaker at the 2008 NetIP Conference.

Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande is co-founder and chairman of Sycamore Networks, Inc. Dr. Deshpande is an influential technology entrepreneur and visionary whose companies and ideas often reshape entire industries. Led by Dr. Deshpande's vision and direction, Sycamore has helped create a fundamental paradigm shift in the role and architecture of the optical network.

Dr. Deshpande is also widely respected for his contributions to education and the greater community. Dr. Deshpande serves as a member of the MIT Corporation, and his generous donations have made possible MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. On the community front, The Deshpande Foundation, which is the family foundation of Gururaj (“Desh”) and Jaishree Deshpande is a leading philanthropic foundation in Massachusetts and India in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship and international development.

Prior to co-founding Sycamore Networks, Dr. Deshpande was founder and chairman of Cascade Communications Corp. Between 1991 and 1997, Cascade grew from a one-person startup to a company with $500 million in revenue and 900 employees. In June of 1997, Cascade was acquired by Ascend Communications for $3.7 billion.

We are in the process of confirming more speakers. Subscribe to our Mailing list and our Blog RSS feed to stay tuned on the progress of the 2008 conference planning.