PAN IIM MEET DELHI 2006
The first meeting of alumni and faculty of all IIMs was held in Delhi in 2006.the objective of this entire project was to make the iim brand global.
The issues were whether and why it should be done, the constraints, the present state of affairs of the brand, and finally how to do it or to chalk out the way forward.
It was attented by the heads of five IIMs namely Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Bangalore, Kolkata and Indore. The chief guest was Mr Kiran Karnik, head of Nascom. Alumni from all six iims also attended in large numbers. It was organized by a common advisory committee, chiefly arranged by the delhi chapter whose main members were Jayraman, Sunil Kala, Kirti Naveen Anand, Pradeep Gupta, all from IIM Ahd, and Deepak Sharma, Somesh Bhagat, Gautam Puri and Joydeep Bhattarcharya from IIMC, also Sandeep from IIML and others. The programme was compered by Noni Chawla of IIMC
The meeting consisted of a panel discussion by the directors of the IIMC on the topic ’how to make the pan IIM brand go global’. Preceded by views of the chief guest on the topic ’innovation in education’. Followed by cocktails and dinner to all.
The main sponsors were, icri, hsbc, times of India…….
Transcript.
The programe was inaugurated by lighting of lamps by the chief guest Mr Kiran Karnik, and other directors.
The chief guest then delivered his keynote address on ‘innovation in education’
While he maintained that India was a highly educated country in some classes. The hurdle according to him was the large population of India. How to make education accessible to the masses was the real challenge.
India was diverse in its cultures, such diversity bred creativity and innovation in thinking. But innovation was missing in the education sector.
The diversities in cultures of India, required different solutions for different segments of society, and this is where innovation in education was important. The present system teaches solutions to problems as they are, gives answers to questions in a structured manner, but does not encourage questioning the answers, with the times, the need to create knowledge , not just disseminate it as inherited by us, is important. Change in education is relevant as everything else in the world esp in the last ten to fifteen years has changed, and is changing rapidly. Therefore we need to create thinkers, and create knowledge, not just copy it. It is worrisome to continue in the same constrained knowledge bank and said this would distract from India being a global brand.
We need to respect different perspectives,, encourage peer discussions, and get away from hierarchial order of education. The problem is we do not share our knowledge, deny teamwork at the education and remain myopic in knowledge management.
The net problem is that of articulation of our knowledge. Very little opportunities exist to display knowledge verbally, it is mostly written.
To summarize, the three critical skills we need to develop to improve our knowledge management, are a) articulation, b) innovation,c)teamwork.
He also stressed that we need to start this process right from selecting the students, at present, the selection ratio for any corporate careers are 20=25% engineers, 10 to 15% graduates, and the balance are ignored, thus wasting large masses of bright and qualified undergraduates.
In his opinion, we need radical reforms in the education system, different systems, not just more in quantity, but different in perspective, away from traditional systems, larger number of university seats, eliminate rigidity in system, and limit autonomy.
It needs to be liberated from bureaucracy also.
Even in the private sector of education, the model of teaching is still the same, with an added evil of monetary bleeding of students, as these are merely money making machines for the promoters of such institutions.
In a nutshell, the entire education system, which is in deep crises, in its inadequacy to meet today’s needs of industry and the world, needed a new innovative approach and reforms for out of the box thinking according to him. With more accountability and flexibility to the institutions.
The next item was panel discussion on the topic of how to take IIM brand global.
Compeered by Noni Chawla in his inimitable humorous tongue-in-cheek style, each director was given a few minutes to present his viewpoint, followed by cross questions between them and also from the audience . The three points to ponder were:
Q: how to make IIM brand global?
Q: is there value in becoming a global brand?
Q: how do you evaluate an educational brand, as opposed to a corporate brand?
Q :life cycle of a brand, does the concept apply to educational institutions also?
Q: differences in building a corporate vs an educational brand
Q: how to contemporise education, change curriculum to suit industry? Who is the customer?- is it the student, corporates, society, country? If there are conflicting needs dependant on the answer to the preceding question, then how to resolve or avoid such conflict? Does the ‘ Indian’ tag play any role in the definition of the brand, is there a differential in brands of various IIMs themselves?
Following are the gist of views of each of the five panelists:
Dr S P Parashar: IIM Indore
Case studies according to him, differentiae learning in different business schools. Contemporary case studies of global nature are taught abroad, and this makes them global. Whereas in India there are no new case studies available.
Participative learning between faculty and students makes for globalization rather than teacher-student hierarchal teaching.
Research articles by faculty if published in international journals would make for globalization, whereas if such articles are published only in domestic for a, no value is added on the global scale.
In order to evaluate business schools, we analyze what such schools do.
There are five dimensions in addition to teaching in IIMs: education, training, consulting, governance and research. If a matrix were drawn of quality of input and output on all five dimensions, the true value of the institution could be derived. In all these areas, he felt innovation was required, in order to excel globally.
He also wanted freedom from government, bureaucracy so that both government and the academic institution could survive. But urged that we should earn such freedom rather than snatch it.
Dr Devi Singh IIM L
Alumni and faculty should interact much more, according to him for interactive learning would take the brand forward.
Positive social engagement , service to society should increase- as the corporate world is already serviced very well.
Three things required , apart from good teaching, in order to go global are,
- create knowledge
- influence practices
- integrate globally
There should be more exchange students in IIMs, that’s what global schools, thrive on, source of students from different cultures globally.
We are inflexible, strong, rich but arrogant, secure in our own knowledge and brand, but we need to look inward to improve ourselves, esp if we have to go global. This can be done by bringing foreign students, going into the social segments to enrich our curriculum.
Prof Sudas Roy IIM C
Q1 He first questions as to what makes a global brand?
According to him it is
first, consistency,
secondly, relevance and
thirdly, high quality.
To achieve these three goals, there should be a common mission and vision amongst all at the academic institution. But diversity is the essence of academia, building a academic brand therefore is more difficult than a corporate brand. Here leadership then becomes the most crucial factor in the entire brand building exercise.
Q2 He then deliberated on the faculty . Good faculty is crucial to building a world class brand. World class faculty is equal to world class brand.
Since one does not have large finances the good people go abroad and do not return. how does one get and retain such people for faculty? The answer according to him is to increase fellowship courses
The next question is the choice of segments to choose for growth. More students? More government, more ngos? General management areas or niche specialistions?so that efficiency and equity of learning is balanced.
The final test is in the work place, can Indian students match their counterparts in multinationals, anywhere in the world?
He felt we are efficient knowledge disseminators, but poor knowledge creators.
We usually gauge ourselves by how many students are placed abroad, rather than anything deeper, but branding should be on broader level..
Prof Trilochan Sastri IIM B
1. Scale, large scale, was to him the most important factor that could take us through to become a global brand. All management globally, are larger in capacity of students, except India. While we have the resources on campus, we admit only few students.
2. Next factor is faculty. Good faculty and good students are interlinked, as ultimately, good students become faculty themselves. Large numbers of faculty are also important, even if small percentage of them attains star, or world class stature, the rest of the college benefits globally. More the faculty, more the research, more the global recognition.
The next factor, hinderant rather, is finance. Bountiful financial resources such as endowments by corporates or students, would enable, faculty to do more research, travel, write papers and spend more creative time on intellectual pursuits rather than on earning or subsidizing incomes through executive training, as is done presently.
Also autonomy from government would strengthen the institution. But this also hampers financial resources.
Last but not the least, he suggested a performance matrix for the faculty, not just students, so that everyone in the chain performed to their best.
All together this would enhance global branding of IIMs
Prof Dholakia IIM A
He fundamentally questioned whether or not we need to think globally or just strengthen domestically? But the consensus was go global!
He then raised query of whether we are talking of branding students and alumni, or the institution? while the alumni are the best brand ambassadors of their alma mater, and so far the performance and thereby their branding, has been exemplary, he emphasized that the world standards of performance are changing rapidly, so what was relevant a decade or two ago was outdated now, and we the alumni need to update ourselves with the times, if we were to stay ahead in the race even now.
With regard to branding of the institutions, he emphasized that high performance faculty was required, outside faculty, global faculty would add to the perspective of the students.
He put aside government interference as a necessary evil, but highlighted the need for balancing the domestic needs and expectations of this vast country, vs the higher aspirations of a few to build a global brand with the IIMs. He also sought more autonomy in creating and executing a vision for the institution independently rather than with interference by the govt.
How to go global? Competition according to him was a key factor. In the outside world there are so many high quality business schools, in neck to neck competition of excellence , competence, while they are highly evolved due to fierce competition, we are still in our basics.
Time factor. The next factor is time management. Due to shortage of staff and hands, the faculty does administrative jobs in addition to teaching. So little time is left for research and thinking.
Problem of attracting good faculty was also present. Since we cannot pay anywhere near to what they get globally, it is a tribute to the system that even now there is some good faculty attached strongly to the academic institutions. Here innovation is the name of the game, to keep the faculty attracted. And to supplement their compensations.
Quality, the next factor is important in going global. What you publish globally has to have depth, not just superficial.
The answer to him was to increase interaction with alumni, collectively, and individually, have joint for a of advisory bodies, and improve inputs through them.
Summary:
Noni Chawla summarized the panel discussion as follows:
The problems in going global are
1 finances
2 autonomy and
3 how to get right faculty.
What does corporate sector contribute to this exercise, as they are the main beneficiaries of the IIMs, they should provide new case studies, fund research or sponsor it in their organizations. Payback from alumni and corporates would help the alma mater- Prof Parashar
Mr Kiran said if good research opportunities are offered, international faculty would come and stay, as India is the current international flavour.
Prof Dholakia said democracy in faculty helps their inner aspirations, and retains them. Prof Trilochan said his strategy to go forward would be
a) raise fees of students
b) take more students-increase scale
c) raise faculty salaries
More alumni would mean more branding, and collectively all could grow. There was no dearth of students of good caliber.
More endowments and financial resources, from any source would help faculty, research, and thus help raise the bar of faculty quality- this was of common consensus
The next question raised by Noni was whether the IIMs should differentiate between themselves? While there were no clear cut answers, some suggestions of niche segments of sectors such as banking, rural management, etc did find support.
Kirti ended the session with an eloquent vote of thanks to all panelists, chief guest, Noni, audience, sponsors and organizers. Noni thanked her in return
The meeting ended with a grand dinner.
