Senior business executives in India are rapidly transforming their country – and many companies based there – from an outsource economy to a major global competitor.

“The appeal of the Indian executive has moved to a higher level and it’s no longer just about cost advantage,” says Chris Clarke, president and CEO of Boyden World Corporation, which has been in the business of global executive search for more than 60 years.

“Their education, business acumen and the rise in the quality of Indian management are impressive,” Clarke adds. “Today multinationals seeking to recruit Indian executives face a new challenge in that it’s not a foregone conclusion that they will leap at an offer outside India.”

Clarke’s comments highlight some of the findings of the global search firm’s recent analysis of the growing talent issues in emerging markets such as India.

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Change Management Problem Introducing User Toolkits for Innovation
from PDMA Blog by Michael Osofsky

Von Hippel and Thomke proposed “user toolkits for innovation” to address the age-old problem of communication breakdowns between engineering teams and product users that result in users not getting what they want. User toolkits are a way for engineering teams to expose enough control over their product for users to be able to customize or configure the product to address their specific need. Examples include a food flavorings company that provides buyers with a toolkit to create their own flavorings, a product category where it is difficult to create products because it is hard for buyers to describe in English the type of flavoring they want. User toolkits are an approach to innovation because they put the solution-building task into the hands of the person who has the problem. Toolkits are another way of applying the maxim that necessity is the mother of invention.

If anyone need further convincing that the Asia-Pacific Rim indeed represents the new front in the global war for talent, they need only consider the fact that 464 of the Fortune 500 currently do business in China and that five of the 10 largest companies by market capitalization worldwide are Chinese.

Considering the growth and hiring activity taking place in some of the world’s key emerging markets, one may begin to see why many of the world’s corporate executive staffing leaders are spending much of their time these days in Hong Kong and deep in the rich recruiting grounds of other booming Asian economies.

One of them is Peter Wright, who, until recently, was vice president of human resources for the 73,000 people who make up the refining and marketing division of energy and natural resources giant BP, plc.

Wright says that corporate talent management leaders would be wise to adopt a systematic approach to their executive-level recruiting process, because it can have “a profound effect on both the performance and profitability of your business.”