Towards an integrated model of human capital development for business model innovation: synthesis and new knowledge

The success of the Indian information technology (IT) industry can partly be attributed to its ability to constantly adapt to the changing business environment. Change often involves an element of learning and the firm's ability to integrate common and specialist knowledge into their production routine. Such changes often require organisations to explore new knowledge and exploit existing knowledge and resource bases. More recently, scholars have suggested that the ability of organisations to simultaneously explore and exploit new learning, or ambidexterity, is a key dynamic capability for ensuring sustained growth and performance. Firms in the Indian IT industry have undertaken significant changes to their operations and business models for solving their clients' business problems by developing sustainable value propositions. Such a view is common in research on business models, which suggests that successful firms create and realise value by offering solutions that fulfill a customer's latent or expressed needs at effective prices. Reinventing business models requires attention to four key areas: customer value proposition, resource architecture, profit formula and underpinning processes. Human resource (HR) and HR management (HRM) practices can and do support the management of change, developing new learning and knowledge resources and, through appropriate policy choices, firms can develop robust process management. Building on our organising framework developed in Chapter 1, this chapter synthesizes the evidence from practice and research from the Indian IT industry's dynamic context for developing a better understanding how certain HRM practices contribute to business model innovation. Again, the rationale of the 'Working in Asia' series comes through in terms of 'voice' for organisations and practitioners