A tribute to Sumantra Ghosal 

Sumantra Ghoshal, reknowned management guru, was born in 1948 in Calcutta. He graduated from Delhi University with Physics major. Took a job at Indian Oil Corporation and rose through the management ranks before moving to the USA on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1981. There, he managed to produce two PhD dissertations at once, initially at MIT's Sloan School of Management, then also at Harvard Business School. Joined INSEAD Business School at France and wrote stream of influential articles and books. In 1994, he joined London Business School. Sumantra was a Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) in the U.K and a Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School. He served as a member of The Committee of Overseers of the Harvard Business School and was the Founding Dean of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.

Professor Ghoshal published 10 books, over 70 articles and several award-winning case studies. Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution, a book he co-authored with Christopher Bartlett, has been listed in the Financial Times as one of the 50 most influential management books and has been translated into nine languages. The Differential Network: Organizing the Multinational Corporation for Value Creation, a book he co-authored with Nitin Nohria, won the George Terry Book Award in 1997. The Individualized Corporation, co-authored with Christopher Bartlett, won the Igor Ansoff Award in 1997, and has been translated into seven languages. His last book, Managing Radical Change, won the Management Book of the Year award in India. He was described by The Economist as 'Euroguru'.

He put forth the '525 rule'. The '525' rule meant that 25 per cent of a company's sales revenue should accrue from products launched during the last 5 years. He was recognised for his research and teaching on strategic, organisational and managerial issues confronting global companies.

Professor Ghoshal died of a brain haemorrhage on March,2004 at Hampstead, United Kingdom.