New Delhi, Oct. 10 -- In 1967, when Mrityunjay Athreya returned to India from Harvard Business School, where he had just completed his doctorate in business administration, India's corporate environment was inward-looking and constrained by strict government controls.

The 26-year-old Athreya's return to his homeland, shunning the many lucrative options available to him in the US, came partly from a love for his country but also because he had figured that Indian companies needed strategic thinking and access to management ideas that were transforming the best companies across the world.

Born in 1941 in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, into a large Tamil Brahmin family, his early education was at a Tamil-medium school before the family moved to ...