India is a hotbed of many things today, but chief among them is perhaps change. Or as Howard Stevenson, senior associate dean and director, external relations, Harvard Business School, sees it, change that breeds opportunity. “Societal change creates a need for people who solve problems,” says Mr. Stevenson. “You’re at a fulcrum now. No one can tell you what India will look like in the next 10 years.”

If Stevenson’s prognosis is correct, the India Inc of the future may have fewer family-run business conglomerates. In an inefficient society, conglomerates thrive, but as efficiency creeps in these will slowly die. Even today, many family businesses have acted like entrepreneurs, spotted opportunity and diversified.

Mr. Stevenson, perhaps best known for his work in entrepreneurship, has held the SarofimRock Chair, set up to provide a base for research and teaching in the field of entrepreneurship, since its inception in ‘82. But entrepreneurship for him is not the business of greed, it’s the ability of a person to identify a problem and find a unique way to solve it. “Entrepreneurship is not about equipping people to make money. It’s a style of management. Making money is the end result of serving your customer,” he says. So out of the window go the age-old ideas of an entrepreneur as a risk taker, founder, innovator, capitalist or worse still, scoundrel. “Bill Gates didn’t build the first operating system. He created the first carnivorous company,” says Mr. Stevenson.

Enterprise is not about taking risk, but about managing risk, “I don’t know a single entrepreneur who gets up in the morning and says where’s the risk, give me more risk.” Instead, he’s a person who fits HBS’ classic description of a person who pursues opportunity beyond resources he currently controls. Think Dhirubhai Ambani and you know what Mr. Stevenson’s talking about.

But, all this needs an environment that supports the entrepreneurial spirit: resource mobility, product markets, labour markets and idea markets. Even the government has role to play. When asked about the government, “My initial reaction would be: Get out of the way. But the government is needed to invest infrastructure, build roads and sewers…ensure uninterrupted water supply, electricity.” And most importantly, we need to celebrate, not grudge, success. “Don’t pick only the wealthiest, pick those who contributed the most to society.”