R.M. Lala
The Joy of Achievement: Conversations with J.R.D. Tata
Fifty years running a group whose owner is a charity, which changes every incentive in it.
Lorenzo Ayres / 1 min
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JRD Tata ran the Tata group for more than fifty years and founded what became Air India, and Lala knew him well enough that this reads as conversation rather than biography.
The structural fact is the thing to take: the majority of the Tata group is owned by charitable trusts, which means the ownership is not a family and is not a market, and that changes what the business is allowed to optimise for. I do not know of another group of that size built that way, and I keep coming back to it when I think about what Odyssey should own and who should own Odyssey.
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