Reverse Innovation

PREFACE

Leaving Something to Chance

I wish I could say that this book is the culmination of a decades-long, well-executed plan. The truth, however, is that it is the happy result of three chance events.

Event 1: An Unexpected Book

I earned my chartered accountancy degree in India in the 1970s. My course of study included many dry texts filled with numbers and abstract concepts. There was also a reference list of books not explicitly covered in the classes. I read many of these, including one by a legendary Harvard Business School professor named Robert Anthony. In it, Anthony expressed a view of my chosen field that was a total revelation to me: accounting, he asserted, was not the technical subject I had thus far presumed it to be. Instead, ...