Sustainable innovations in an indigenous Indian Ayurvedic MNE

Abstract

This research is grounded in the setting of a novel Indian multinational enterprise (MNE) which focuses on the dual provision of indigenous Ayurvedic ‘care’ and ‘cure’ services and products from rural settings in India. Employing a qualitative case study design, we used analysis, interviews, observational and secondary data. This study employs the theoretical lenses of dynamic capability and business models for analyzing the MNE’s innovative and sustainable growth. These findings show how this MNE employed the indigenous processes of sensing, seizing and transforming resources to formulate and explore innovative treatments and develop a sustainable business model for curing and caring for its patients. The MNE renewed its existing capabilities base through various context-specific recombinations and reconfigurations in its ecosystem’s resources, comprised of social community and the untapped knowledge of the Ayurveda’s scriptures to deliver sustained technological and administrative innovations for its patients. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.