Veteran Management Gurus Share the Stage at National Education Summit 2011

The National Education Summit 2011, organized by Dainik Bhaskar Group at New Delhi this month, proved to be a remarkable success. Focussed on improving the quality of higher education in India, the summit involved sharing of apt insights from several veteran management gurus of today. The in-depth discussion between the dignitaries and learned management experts highlighted several key issues and the ways to address them.
Mentioning about the real-world implications of the quality gap, Mr. Ramesh Chandra Agarwal, Chairman at Dainik Bhaskar Group nominated the lack of quality manpower as one of their prime challenges. According to him, Dainik Bhaskar Group is in an annual need of nearly 2000 new people but the gap between the desired and available quality of manpower adversely affects recruitments.
The director IMT Ghaziabad, Dr. Bibek Banerjee shared his views about brand building and quality improvement at B-schools. He recognized the lack of imagination and creativity amongst the students and faculty both as one of the major factors that hampers the quality of education. He also mentioned that the notion of ‘B-schools becoming more of placement centres rather than the educational institutes’ deviates their focus from ‘providing quality education’ to marketing.
In order to overcome these challenges, Dr. Bibek Banerjee laid stress upon the attracting and retaining the great faculty.  He also emphasised on maintaining focus on creating value rather than participating in the rat-race of rankings and ratings. As a definitive measure to achieve this, he highlighted the importance of practical learning and building international connections to offer students a real world-class education.
Chairman of AICTE, SS Mantha, also talked about employment opportunities and applicability of quality education to employability potential of budding professionals. He brought up the subject of transparent and clean system considering the importance of education sector in the overall growth of country. Whereas he emphasized on the need of knowledgeable workers, he mentioned that it could be possible only by newer and better training models. He highlighted the existing deficit of employable graduates because of the lack of quality our current education system is suffering from.
Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University, Prof. Rajasekharan Pillai contributed with his views on media’s changing role in the entire education scenario. He discussed the need for improving communication using ICT tools in the classroom-based training of professionals. According to him, the education system should also benefit by the established ways of quality assurance and effective school leadership management. Re-iterating the role of media in the changing educational scenario, he also recognized the fact that the vocabulary of education is changing.
Prof. Raj Dhankar, Dean FMS Delhi also supported the importance of quality measurement and quality assurance in the educational institute. At the same time, he shared his concerns about attracting and retaining the good faculty at the management institutes. In this rapidly changing economic scenario of the country, he maintained that education’s commercialization should be restricted to a measurable limit.
Hon. HRD Minister, Govt of India, Kapil Sibal, who was also the chief guest at the summit, identified ‘management’ as one of the least discussed subject in India. On the issues around corruption in the education system, his opinion for everyone is to maintain a positive and optimistic attitude. He focused on introducing values to the education system such that the B-schools could inspire everyone to give rise to a better and more manageable social system. Discussing the need to foresee the future while designing educational systems, he also quoted, “The mind is like parachute you need to open it.” 
The Dean (Academics) at IIM Bangalore, Prof. Trilochan Sastry shared his blunt remarks about the need of establishing international benchmarks to assess the quality of education. In addition, he stressed upon the need for having role models who could responsibly run the entire education system. Clearly, he was quite vocal in emphasizing the importance of quality leadership that could cascade well into the education system.
Following the similar lines, Prof. Xavier, Director IIM Ranchi pointed out few parameters about the Indian educational system. His direct approach while asking about the number of world-class institutes and the net knowledge creation was apparently quite thought provoking among the attendees. He also recognized that the Indian institutes merely become launching pads for the students to go for western universities later. This is why we should focus on building a holistic education system that can compete with world-class universities.
K. Srikkanth, former Indian Cricket Captain and Chairman Selection Committee Indian Cricket Team correlated his cricket and leadership experiences with the education system too. He delivered a charged-up speech to point out the importance of making learning enjoyable like in sports. Importance of doing things differently and seeing management education as something beyond analytics and theory were few other points he highlighted during his speech.
The audience also exhibited their curiosity with their thought-provoking question about the relevance of bodies like AICTE and UGC. In response to this question, the panel of experts told that the functioning of these bodies is consistently reviewed and governed by the government.
In addition to several noteworthy speakers, corporate giants including IBM and Microsoft also affirmed the importance of quality education. The IBM team delivered a presentation on “Education Generation Y” and covered several points relevant to the discussion. The presentation was aimed at fostering a spirit of collaboration amongst students and making them learn to identify their shortcomings. It also identified knowledge sharing with tools, such as a wiki or a team room, as crucial educational aids. The IBM team consistently maintained that the future of India can only be driven by excellent students and great education system.
Similarly, representatives of Microsoft India contributed to the discussion mentioning about the technology-centric ways to improve quality of education. Identifying the importance of utilization of technology, they suggested that B-schools should extend their partnerships with companies. This will assist them create a corporate-ready culture based on the relevant researches.

With the synergy of thoughts from the most learned minds of the country, the National Education Summit 2011 established a new milestone towards improvement of quality of education. In India, where economic and education scenarios are rapidly changing, there is a need for frequent revisions in the way education is being delivered. The panel of reputed management experts and leaders from the corporate giants contributed benevolently to the benefit of management schools and higher education system in India.

IMT Ghaziabad’s Strategic Simulation Workshop

Experiences teach better than any words can. Especially when it is to do with a career. And that is exactly what 45 participants from 13 companies understood when they went for the Strategic Simulation Workshop organized by Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad and alumni of Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). Held at IMT Ghaziabad, the workshop was anchored by IMT Ghaziabad’s dynamic director, Dr. Bibek Banerjee. Dr. Bibek Banerjee was Professor of Marketing and Economics at IIMA. His classes were particularly interesting and effective as Dr. Banerjee uses simulation techniques extensively. He has designed memorable senior and top management executive development programs for several organizations including Coca Cola, Ericsson, the Aditya Birla Group, Genpact, Microsoft, the Citigroup, Infosys, TATA group (TAS, TML, Tata Steel, TCL, TMTC), Unilever India (HUL), HDFC Bank, TVS Group, BPCL, IOC, GAIL, ORG-MARG, Maharaja Group (Sri Lanka), Comcraft Steel (Kenya), etc.This workshop has been specially created for high performance middle level managers who are slated for bigger responsibilities.
Dr. Banerjee said, “The workshop provides a real life feel of integrated management by combining the soft skills of leadership, people management and communication, with the hard skills of planning, forecasting, marketing, finance, quality and operations. Here, with the help of several real scenarios and external interventions, we try to force participants to think through their decisions and evaluate whether their business strategies are the best fit for the external environment.”
Targeted at corporate executives, the Strategic Simulation Workshop built on their backgrounds, giving them a leg up the career ladder. Akshay Duggal, General Manager, New Projects & Technologies, from Centum Workskills, the learning division for the Bharti Group, said, "We saw how our decisions affected the entire life cycle of business. This workshop is great for senior management who would want to re-look at their thought processes during decision-making, and how to look at business strategy from an integrated point of view. The workshop helps us revisit fundamentals of business.  By the way, this would be the best ever finance workshop for non-finance managers. The workshop has far exceeded my expectations."
Quite unlike the usual lecture based seminars that come up at regular intervals in a manager’s life and career, this one was different. It has been created by a team of young MBAs from IIM Ahmedabad. Conducted by Ferzand FK and John Cherian, the education programme was tailor made for middle level managers working with Indian business houses.
Participants from companies like Bosch, Brigade Enterprises, Mahindra Navistar Engines, Philips, Idea Cellular, Indus Towers, Centum Workskills, Pearson Education, Educomp and MakeMyTrip were grouped into teams of 4-6 members. Each of those teams worked as a company in a simulated environment with team members working together towards actualizing a single group vision. They formulated strategies, made marketing plans, forecast financial implications, completely owning and putting together convincing presentations that would persuade their seniors and subordinates on the viability of their vision. This in turn would make the micro group’s vision so compelling that the entire company would follow it.
At the end of the Strategic Simulation Workshop Pankaj Gupta, Director of Educomp Raffles Higher Education, Noida Campus, said, “The workshop was very exciting and fast-paced. It centred around customer centric themes, financial impact of decision and people skills. As the program unfolded, we went through several different experiences of running a business in a simulated world. I would very strongly recommend this workshop to middle managers who are looking to move towards higher positions in their organizations.”

Ferzand F K, facilitator from enParadigm said, "We were planning for about  30-35 participants, as the workshop was being held for the first time in the NCR region. However, we also got participants from cities such as Pune, Bangalore, Mumbai, Indore, Gwalior etc. The workshop will be held next in Mumbai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad."

Choose a Future-ready MBA at IMT Hyderabad

If you are one of those who have constantly wished to see their names in the list of respectable management professionals at some point in future, you’re possibly yet to reach the right destination for your management studies. Of course, there are almost countless management institutes in almost every part of the country today. However, the harsh reality is that many of the recently mushroomed management institutes do not prepare their students with even half of the skills required to shape their career in a fast-moving and result-oriented corporate sector of today.

This is why it makes sense to choose an MBA course only from the most reputed institutes, such as IMT, IIMs, XLRI and few more. In the series of the leading management institutes, IMT Hyderabad is the newest offering from the reputed chain of the IMT B-schools, IMT Ghaziabad, IMT Nagpur, and IMT Dubai. With its state of the art campus spread over 30 acres of lush green land, the institute claims to have few gifted academicians and management teachers for ensuring the best possible level of management education.

It does not need an explanation to understand the importance of a world-class infrastructure and facilities when it comes to ‘shaping careers of youth in a futuristic fashion’. This realization has resulted in an extensive effort went into building of the infrastructure that can ensure that the students wouldn’t ever feel themselves lagging behind the most renowned management institutions in India and abroad. The founders of IMT Hyderabad realize that the vision of bringing out the best in the promising youth of India by means of an extensive and scientific study methodology can be made possible only if the best facilities, administration, and infrastructure-related demands of education are met at each and every step.

Of course, dreamy eyes of an MBA aspirant can foresee the possibilities of their dreams come true only if the chosen business school is adequately equipped with what it takes to make a world-class management professional.  This is why a major part of making of a great business school goes into the detailed planning of infrastructural requirements, consideration of the most proven teaching methodologies and the most experienced management faculty. Thankfully, foundation of IMT Hyderabad has been laid considering the above factors as their building blocks in order to ensure a future-ready education for the next generation of management experts.