Firms and Global Productivity Initiative
Businesses play an important role in economic growth: the creation of well-paying jobs is crucial to building healthy, sustainable economies and to alleviating poverty. But a lack of high-quality, in-depth data on firms has limited what is known about private-sector productivity throughout the developing world.
The Firms and Global Productivity Initiative, launched in 2018, studies the management practices, innovation, and products driving growth in India. The country has the potential to be the world’s largest economy, but is also home to hundreds of millions of citizens who live in poverty. The centerpiece of the initiative is the India Management and Growth Survey (IMGS), a large-scale national survey of Indian firms. A joint Stanford-India team, which includes more than 20 researchers and enumerators in Pune, India, is leading the survey of over 2,000 firms across hundreds of manufacturing sectors. Collectively, the firms employ several million people and produce billions of rupees in output annually.
In May 2024, the initiative held an event, hosted by the King Center, to announce the launch of its first project report, "Batting ahead: Management, innovation and the future of Indian manufacturing," which was published by the Centre for Technology, Innovation, and Economic Research (CTIER) in India.
The initiative is led by a team of researchers who created the influential World Management Survey, which has grown to include 35 countries and more than 20,000 interviews.
Team
- Nicholas Bloom, Stanford co-director
- Pete Klenow, Stanford co-director
- Janak Nabar, CTIER (India) co-director
- Megha Patnaik, LUISS (Italy) co-director
- Mert Akan, predoctoral research fellow
Selected Work
Publications
Batting ahead: Management, innovation and the future of Indian manufacturing
Management practices and productivity in India
News
A blueprint for India’s potential for growth through improved management practices
Events
Speaker Series on the Future of the Indian Economy
Contact
For more information about the initiative, please contact King Center Executive Director Jessica Leino at jleino@stanford.edu.