Rethinking the MBA

Rethinking the MBA 

From June 2010, Nitin Nohria, alumnus of IIT Bombay, will
take over the responsibilities to lead Harvard Business
School, the world's most respected management education
institute. We are all wondering, where will Nitin and his
team lead Harvard? 

We get some idea of Harvard's strategic directions, from
the recent landmark research by Harvard Professors, which
 is summarized in the HBS publication, "Rethinking the MBA".
This research coincides with the year of completion of 100
 years of Management education by Harvard. For a quick
review listen to David Garvin at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBxtrbj_yXU.
The research and book "Rethinking the MBA" is also
co-authored by Srikant Datar, IIM Ahmedabad alumnus.

The research is based on data collected for the period
2000 to 2008 from 36 top management schools in the
world, detailed interviews with Deans, faculty, recruiters,
employers and other stakeholders. Six detailed case
studies were prepared.

What is required in an MBA course are three major
components - (1) Knowing - Knowledge of the various
management subjects. (2) Doing - Having the knowledge,
how to actually do things in practical situations (3) Being -
Being aware of the actual purpose of what managers do,
the responsibilities and roles of managers towards
shareholders, society at large, employees etc.

Most existing MBA programs already take care of the
"Knowing" component. Students 'know' a lot more than
even what the actual job demands. But present day MBAs
do not meet the requirements of "Doing" and "Being".
In the present context, the research identified following
unmet requirements by existing MBA programs:
(1) Global Perspective (2) Leadership Development
(3) Integration (4) Organizational Realities (Power, Politics etc.)
(5) Creative, Innovative thinking (6) Oral and written Communication
(7) Risk, Regulation & Restraint

Leading management Schools have already initiated
changes to incorporate these unmet requirements in their
MBA programs. There are however many challenges. How
to provide "doing" component? Generally to learn "doing",
the student must be in a real life environment, in small
groups, under close supervision of an experienced
professional. The same requirements have been already
successfully implemented by Medical schools and they
have evolved a model which can be easily copied by
Business Schools. Harvard Medical School has about
600 students but the faculty to teach these students
exceeds 10,000 (mainly because faculty includes
several physicians from the attached medical hospitals.)
How will Business Schools build this large, practicing
manager's teams to become part of faculty?

A part of the solution to meet this requirement is the
successful, well placed community of Alumni of these
business schools. Harvard is planning to mobilize the
alumni to add the "doing" component to their MBA program. 

Will IIT and IIM alumni do the same for their almamaters?  

Aa Ab Laut Chalen to BIMTECH, Greater Noida

Aa Ab Laut Chalen (AALC) group has taken up first project at BIMTECH (Birla Instititue of Management Technology) in Greater Noida, which is about 60 km from New Delhi and part of National Capital Region.

BIMTECH is one of the premier private Business Schools in North India. The institute has excellent residential campus with more than 700 students studying various post graduate Management diploma courses. For details please visit  http://www.bimtech.ac.in/

It all started with an invitation to teach ERP for the PGDM students. This involved understanding full course curriculum because ERP touches upon almost all subject areas taught in PGDM courses. What we concluded was that various 'Technologies of Management' need to be taught to students in the modern age of internet and information technology. The modern day Management courses need to complement with learning of several technologies of Management such as 'Collaboration Technologies', 'ERP', "CRM", 'Business Intelligence' and so on. The managers need not know how to build these solutions but must know how to use these technologies for improving management efficiency. They need to know how to design and test applications and develop organizations which will adopt these technologies effectively.

The AALC team has now designed a complete cloud based platform to enable access to these applications as well as store training resources and enable delivery of teaching of these courses with trainers who are physically located in remote parts of the world.

Some details about this project are available at https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AecGSz8Wq7OcZGRkaHM2M2ZfMTEwMnh6czRwdmhi&hl=en

Details about each course and the AALC volunteers will be published in the following posts. Please post your comments and how would like to participate.

Can you work in India and send the earnings back in Canada?

All of us keep wondering how to bring money back to Canada.

We have experience of the last 50 years. Getting even a few hundred dollars out of the country was such a difficult task. Fortunately, the things have improved a lot. Rupee is still not a completely free currency, but the rules have become very liberal. Every year you can repatriate as much as $200,000 per family member. You need to state the reason for sending money out of country and need to provide a certificate from a chartered accountant to verify the source of money. (essentially to prevent money laundering). But, overall, it is no longer very difficult to bring your own money back to Canada.

Can a Canadian citizen be employed in India? Hiring any foreign Citizen by an Indian employer is not easy. The foreigner will have to apply for work visa and the process is as difficult as getting a work visa in any other country. But it is very simple for Canadians of Indian Origin. You can apply one time and get a lifetime OCI "Overseas Citizenship of India". As an OCI, you have same previleges as any Indian Citizen to work in India (except for Govt jobs.). Check out the details about OCI rules and the procedures for application at http://www.cgitoronto.ca/OCI/ocigeninfo.html. It takes a few months to get your OCI card in hand, so please start the process as early as possible.

Shashi Tharoor: Why nations should pursue "soft" power | Video on TED.com

Must watch lecture


Shashi Tharoor: Why nations should pursue "soft" power Video on TED.com

Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education in India

In March 2009, Prof. Yashpal committee submitted their report to the government advising various recommendations to renovate the higher education system in India.

The committee emphasis concerns on mushrooming engineering and management colleges and deemed universities, with some notable exceptions, which have largely become, mere business entities dispensing very poor quality education.

However, the committee recognizes the fact that IITs and IIMs are the only bright spots in the otherwise dismal scenario of higher education in India. These institutions were created in the first phase of nation building, and kept out of traditional university structure to give them free play to be able to help the nation to have a pool of excellent engineering and managerial talent. The commission acknowledge their success in this avenue.

Looking at the enormous potential they have, it has been felt that they must strive to be models of all-round excellence, like the famous Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or CALTECH in the US. The commission further recommends, this requires rethinking to prevent isolation of the study of the engineering and management from other knowledge areas. This realization is reflected in the initiatives of some of the IITs that aim to introduce humanities and other discipline and expand their scope. These initiatives strengthen our argument that they need to broaden their curriculum framework and assume the functions of full-fledged universities without loosing their unique character. We can than look forward to the day when IITs and IIMs would be producing scholars in literature, linguistics and politics along with engineering and management wizards who would have substantial motivation for engagement with the local community, and the opportunity to use and enhance learning by solving real-life problems in their immediate environment.

While working towards this goal, different IITs and IIMs could have different strategies to expand and diversify, however the government once again have to trust on their autonomous structure.

Currently, many students passing out from institutions of higher education do so without obtaining the kind of skills they really need to work in a real-world environment. Among the drawbacks many student face the lack of ability to analyze or solve problems, relate problems to different contexts, communicate clearly and have an integrated understanding of different branches of knolwedge.

These problems can be addressed if the processes by which curriculum is designed and then syllabi are determined undergo improvement.

Alumni of IIT and IIM can take on this challenge to help the new generation to understand the reality of different kinds of work. It would allow students what they have learned in the classroom to real-world situations and in doing so not only makes them better prepared for their own entry into the world of employment or academic research, but also strenghtens their understanding of the underlying concepts they are supposed to have learned.

with inputs from Prof. Yashpal Committee report

List for a trainer assignment in India

Are you keeping track of the education scene in India?

This is one amazing growth story.

I am sure that you already know so many more IITs will start very soon.

But the educational institutes offering Engineering and all other bachelor and post graduate degrees have mushroomed beyond imagination. When Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) offered me Visiting Professor assignment, I was thinking Delhi probably will have a maximum of a dozen Management Schools offering MBA/PGDM degrees. (Just compare with Toronto and it looks right). But when I landed in BIMTECH which is in Greater Noida, only a part of National Capital Region (NCR), I was astonished to know that in Greater Noida itself there are 5 Knowledge Parks with about 160 colleges and almost every college is offering MBA/PGDM courses. Each college has a campus of minimum of about 10 acres land. Already about 100000 students are enrolled and the number is expected to grow to about 200,000 in next few years.

There are lot and lots of opportunities of training assignments in India. If you have some exceptional skills that can be offered in India in the form of training programs then please resond to this blog with your comments and email me your resume with proposed training offers at ashokr@erplabs.ca

Aa jao, Ab Laut Chalen!