Management guru C K Prahalad on Thursday used a series of examples to demolish popular myths about India's lack of competitiveness.
He said businessmen of every country faced varied problems, and India's lack of progress in certain fields was a boon in some ways.
"In the US, getting fixed-line subscribers to switch to cellphones is a problem, but it is not an issue in India because it has few fixed lines," he pointed out.
The first myth, Prahalad told a gathering of the Confederation of Indian Industry, was that India lacked international quality standards.
Thirty-five of the 40 software facilities in the world having a CMM level 4 or 5 certification were located in India, he said and added that companies like Sundaram Clayton had world-class manufacturing standards, while Sundaram Fasteners was a winner of General Motors' Supplier of the Year award.
Prahalad said firms like Telco and Mahindra & Mahindra, which had developed world-class automobiles at a fraction of the global cost -- Mahindra & Mahindra developed the Scorpio for $120 million -- against over $500 million in the US, had demolished the myth that India was not capable of developing products from scratch.
Prahalad also highlighted India's competitiveness in fields scarcely paid attention to. The Aravind Eye Hospital, he said, implanted lenses at $16 a piece, compared to $1,000 in the US.
If it charged the US rates, it would have earned $250 million from 250,000 operations a year. Similarly, the Jaipur Foot Institute develops prostheses at $30 apiece, against $10,000 in the US.
In the US, the Jaipur Foot would have been a $160 million business, given that it fitted 16,000 limbs in 2002, he added.
Though the Aravind Eye Hospital and Jaipur Foot faced the same problems that plagued Indian industry, Prahalad said they became world-beaters as their managements worried less about the external environment and more about how they could change for the better.