With India emerging as the third largest start-up nation in the world, there is a growing demand for efficient and innovative management graduates who are adept at devising problem solving strategies, says DR KJS Anand
With rapidly changing nature of businesses in a highly technology driven world ‘Innovate or Die’ is the mantra that entrepreneurs know by heart. While globalisation has made more markets easily available and improved connectivity has helped fasten business processes. It has also increased competition and challenges to new businesses manifold. The shift in on-the-ground business realities also needs to be adequately reflected in what business schools teach their students.
Management is a much sought after discipline of education today across the world. With India emerging as the third largest startup ecosystem in the world, there is growing demand for efficient and innovative management graduates who are adept and trained at devising new strategies to resolve problems.
Despite the increase in demand for the discipline and the changing paradigm of management and business, Indian management education was slow to respond to the changing trends. However, more and more B-schools today are reworking their syllabus, pedagogical techniques, agenda as well as admission criteria to better suit the needs of the time. Here are a few mechanisms that are already being adopted by new age B-schools in India:
Out of class teaching
Currently, Indian education system across the board strictly follows the culture of in-class teaching. Once considered as an ideal mode, the teaching method has lost its essence at the hands of the need for more practical exposure, to match pace with the industry.
In-class teaching method puts a burden on the faculty where they are judged by number of students turning up for the class, number of classes taken, numbers scored by the students in examinations. Hence, there takes place a quantitative analysis of the imparted knowledge rather than being a qualitative one. This also creates a distance between the students and the faculty, which hinders the sharing of experience and practical exposure.
Additionally, with in-class teaching, what is imparted is theoretical knowledge. While an understanding of the theories of business and economics, and the history of growth of entrepreneurship is important for every management student, the real teaching comes from action and practical learning. Even employers today evaluate students less by the schools they have attended but more by the practical exposure they have had. A student who has dabbled in a business or run an entrepreneurial project will get preference over a student who might be a high scorer but has had no such real time experience.
Out of class teaching combining theoretical lectures with practical projects is the need of the time and is being adopted by many B-schools today. For example, while teaching students the retail shelf management, it is important to depute them in a live store where they would be able to bear the brunt of the loss and profit. In a bid to become good managers, the students should be able to realise the impact of their decisions in real time, not on paper.
Incubate enterprises while studying and not after it
One of the most essential demands of the industry today is incubation. Students should be able to incubate while studying. Incubating students is not only important to generate more enterprises but also to generate economic value. Incubation is also imperative to help students dwell with a real life problem on their own. Therefore, it is necessary for every management institution to introduce the concept of incubation. B-schools can be valuable places where ideas can be incubated, debated and funded by successful alumni, if found viable.
Ideally, first generation entrepreneurs, who have not only developed enterprises but have also achieved success in international scenario, should operate such centers. In this context, a combined support from the industry, institution as well as the Government is required to make incubation a success in India.
When students spend a fortune to pursue the degrees, they are not in a position to take entrepreneurial risks due to loan or family liabilities. Due to high opportunity cost of education, less than 10 per cent of IT and IIM students get into incubation despite the presence of state of art incubation centers within their premises. Resultantly, they stay away from entrepreneurship and look for sustainable jobs. On the contrary, if students are given the opportunity to start their enterprise during their course of degree, it would give their entrepreneurial talent the right push at the right time.
Hence, it is necessary for the Government to support such initiatives irrespective of it being public or private. This would not only invite innovation but would also become a platform to new enterprises.
Build centers around application areas, as traditional departments are passe
Department, by its nomenclature, defines compartmentalisation and classification. Therefore, today, where digital marketing rules the roost by being a blend of marketing and IT, building departments seems story of past. Digital marketing sets the perfect example of impact that would be created if two different departments were brought within one application area. Digital marketing very efficiently connects two departments to offer programmes that combine to create courses and provide industry advisory protocols.
Precisely, departments can be conceived as a building or a construction that is restricted in terms of courses and opportunities. However, in case of centres, multi-disciplinary teaching and research is a norm. It is an amalgamation where convergence of power takes place as it allows many industries to participate together. Creating centres of management learning that may integrate several associated aspects and sub-groups of business including ideation, incubation, fund-raising, talent acquisition, business development, marketing etc is the future. In this context, it is important for both the industry and the Government to open about the providing internship, placements and sharing data.
Widening admission criteria
Many successful professionals in different domains are today deciding to take sabbaticals from their careers to polish their skill set. Many of them, may be engineers, or even doctors, desire to study management courses. Realising this shift in nature of students, many B-schools today are reworking their admission criterion to also provide weightage to experience and practical exposure along with test scores. This phenomenon is likely to grow further in coming years.
(The writer is executive director, IMS Noida)