How do societies identify and promote merit? Enabling all people to fulfill their potential, and ensuring the selection of competent and capable leaders are central challenges for any society. These are not new concerns. Scholars, educators, and political and economic elites in China and India have been pondering them for centuries and continue to do so today, with enormously high stakes. In Making Meritocracy, Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi have gathered over a dozen experts from a range of intellectual perspectives-political science, history, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and applied mathematics-to discuss how the two most populous societies in the world have addressed the issue of building meritocracy historically, philosophically, and in practice. They focus on how contemporary policy makers, educators, and private-sector practitioners seek to promote it today. Importantly, they also discuss Singapore, which is home to large Chinese and Indian populations and the most successful meritocracy in recent times. Both China and India look to it for lessons. Though the past, present, and future of meritocracy building in China and India have distinctive local inflections, their attempts to enhance their power, influence, and social well-being by prioritizing merit-based advancement offers rich lessons both for one another and for the rest of the world-including rich countries like the United States, which are currently witnessing broad-based attacks on the very idea of meritocracy.

Already cited by the Financial Times, Forbes.com, The Economic Times, WSJ/Mint and several other prominent global business publications, Winning in Emerging Markets is quickly becoming the go-to book for mapping a strategy for entering new markets--and then quickly gaining a competitive edge in those high growth regions. Advancing the discussion about emerging markets themselves and how organizations can best leverage the potential of these regions, Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu -- both well respected thinkers on the subject -- argue there is more to sizing up these markets than just evaluating data points related to size, population, and growth potential. In fact, they say the possibility to expand a company's progress in developing economies is to first asses the area's lack of institutional infrastructure--and then to formulate strategies around what the authors call "institutional voids" to the firm's advantage. Khanna and Palepu say the primary exploitable characteristic of an emerging market are such voids, and though they create challenges, they also provide major opportunity both for multinationals and local contenders. Winning in Emerging Markets serves as a playbook for measuring a market's potential and for crafting a strategy to succeed there.

How do societies identify and promote merit? Enabling all people to fulfill their potential, and ensuring the selection of competent and capable leaders are central challenges for any society. These are not new concerns. Scholars, educators, and political and economic elites in China and India have been pondering them for centuries and continue to do so today, with enormously high stakes. In Making Meritocracy, Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi have gathered over a dozen experts from a range of intellectual perspectives-political science, history, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and applied mathematics-to discuss how the two most populous societies in the world have addressed the issue of building meritocracy historically, philosophically, and in practice. They focus on how contemporary policy makers, educators, and private-sector practitioners seek to promote it today. Importantly, they also discuss Singapore, which is home to large Chinese and Indian populations and the most successful meritocracy in recent times. Both China and India look to it for lessons. Though the past, present, and future of meritocracy building in China and India have distinctive local inflections, their attempts to enhance their power, influence, and social well-being by prioritizing merit-based advancement offers rich lessons both for one another and for the rest of the world-including rich countries like the United States, which are currently witnessing broad-based attacks on the very idea of meritocracy.

"Khanna has written an objective and insightful comparison of China and India. His analysis of Indian developments is particularly outstanding, because it is based on his firsthand experiences in India. But he does not hold back in his praise of Chinese successes. The result is a very fair-minded report on the two Asian giants."-- Foreign Affairs "Khanna delivers a dense but lively blend of anecdotes and analysis. He shows how entrepreneurial spirit is transforming both these countries not only economically, but strengthening ties between the two." -- Newsweek Much attention is being paid to business opportunity in China and India, the world's most populous nations. According to Tarun Khanna, it's the new entrepreneurial emergence of these two nations that will have the greatest impact on business, politics, and global society as a whole. Billions of Entrepreneurs is an elegantly written book that mixes on-the-ground stories with thorough research to show how Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs are creating change through new business models, and bringing hope to countless people across the globe.