Service with a Thai smile

Dipak C Jain, the recently-appointed dean of Insead, a top international business school with campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, is no stranger to Thailand.

In the early 2000s, Jain, an Indian-born American educator, was an advisor to the Thai Prime Minister's office.

Prior to his Insead appointment, Jain was dean of the Kellogg school, Northwestern University in the US. He resigned from Kellogg in 2009 after 25 years of service, including eight years as dean of the Kellogg school.

Jain says he accepted the Insead appointment because the business school, founded in the 1950s, is truly international. It's not French, even though it was founded in Fontainebleau, where the main campus is situated.

"This global business school is more like the United Nations, as we have over 1,000 students from 80 different countries, including 120 PhD candidates. Now, about 600 are studying in France, while about 400 are in Singapore," he says.

In addition, Insead's faculty is highly diverse, with members recruited from many countries around the world.

Insead is also renowned for its high-quality research, as evidenced by the fact that it gave birth to the "Blue Ocean" business strategy in the early 2000s.

Regarding Thailand, Jain, a professor of marketing, says he was instrumental in the "Branding Thailand" project from 2002-2004.

Back then, he advised the country to take advantage of "Thai-ness" and promote hospitality, medical tourism, spas and related sectors.

In his opinion, manufacturing is not Thailand's strength, but the country's competitive advantage lies in "soft" industries such as hospitality.

In this context, Thailand has strong potential to be the tourism hub for Indochina.

Looking forward, Jain suggests that Thailand further extends its competitive advantage by promoting healthcare and related services, to tap the growing demand from Asia's rapidly-ageing population, such as the Japanese.

"Thailand has a strong culture that respects and treats elderly people well. It's like India. When I go to Thailand to teach a class of senior executives, I'm always impressed that the students respect the teacher and always bow," he says.

According to Jain, Japan now has a large population of senior citizens needing healthcare and other services, while China's one-child policy will also lead to a big demand for these services in the near future.

Besides healthcare and related services, Jain also suggests that Thailand use information technology and the Internet to boost its international competitiveness via e-commerce.

Thai and Asian entrepreneurs should emphasise more business-to-business (B-to-B) transactions, especially for products which are not highly visible to consumers.

In this context, Thai and other Asian companies have a good chance to compete against Western firms if they can provide the same products and services at a cheaper price.

Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei is a good example, as it is well-positioned to compete against Cisco,  Ericsson and the likes, due to its capability in providing comparable products at a cheaper price.

In his opinion, B-to-B e-commerce is not perception-driven as in the case of B-to-C (business to consumers), so Asian companies have a better chance to be successful in the global marketplace.